COURT STRUCK DOWN FRANCE’S 279-81 UNDER-15 SOCIAL MEDIA BAN
France’s parliament passed an under-15 social media ban, but the Constitutional Council struck it down before it could take effect.
The Senate approved the bill on July 21, 2026, and the National Assembly followed the same day, passing it by 279 votes to 81. It was presented as the first such ban in an EU country, The Guardian reported.
President Emmanuel Macron championed the measure as a major reform of his final term. “France is leading the way in Europe when it comes to protecting our children and teenagers,” he said in a video posted on social media, calling the vote “a major step forward.”
He said he intended to enforce the ban by September. On X, he wrote that “The Constitutional Council must now rule on it, and then it will be time to take action to make this measure a reality and protect our children online.”
France has also been in the headlines for banning supermarkets from tossing edible food.
What the bill would have done
The ban was to arrive in two stages. Under-15s would have been blocked from creating new accounts from September 1, 2026, and the restriction would have applied to existing accounts from January 2027.
Digital minister Anne Le Hénanff said platforms would be responsible for imposing the rule. She told journalists that age-verification tools already existed and that others were being developed.
“If someone is under 15, the account will be closed,” she said. She also said users’ personal data would be protected.
The text included exceptions for online encyclopedias and educational platforms. It provided no penalties for children or parents.
The bill also carried a mobile phone ban in high schools. Enforcing the law by September would have let that provision start with the French school year.
“The major platforms are, in my view, largely ready,” assembly member Laure Miller told AFP.
The Senate had pushed a different plan: blacklist platforms deemed harmful to child development and let teens use the rest with parental consent. The Assembly’s blanket ban won out.
Centrist senator Catherine Morin-Desailly said the blacklist route would take longer. She said it needed further consultations with the European Commission and carried a “small risk” of non-compliance with European law.
Critics on the left raised concerns about age verification, the speed of rollout, circumvention and privacy.
The backdrop
France’s public health watchdog had said TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram were harmful to adolescents, particularly girls. It also noted that those platforms were not the sole cause of declining mental health.
The European Commission was considering a social-media ban after France, Greece and Spain pushed for restrictions. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said children should have “phased and gradual access” to social media.
The Commission had also unveiled an age-verification app, which member states including France had begun testing.
Australia moved first globally. In December 2025 it became the first country to require major platforms to remove accounts held by under-16s or face heavy fines.
What happened next
On August 14, 2026, the Constitutional Council struck down the bill’s core under-15 prohibition. The ban never took effect.
The Council ruled that the law “constitutes an infringement that is neither appropriate, necessary, nor proportionate” to under-15s’ freedom of expression and communication, the BBC reported. It also found the text lacked sufficient legal safeguards for privacy, including safeguards governing age verification.
The Council also found the bill applied broadly to platforms that let users connect and share or discover content. It did not distinguish by a child’s age, maturity, family circumstances or the risks of the service, according to a summary from the European Audiovisual Observatory.
With the prohibition gone, the September 1, 2026 and January 2027 timetable was left inoperative.
The school phone provision stayed in the law. The Observatory summary said the school-hours phone ban was extended to sixth-form colleges from the start of the 2026-27 academic year.
After the ruling, Macron asked Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to prepare a revised proposal that addresses the Council’s concerns.
