FRANCE’S TOP COURT KILLS ITS UNDER-15 SOCIAL MEDIA BAN
France’s parliament passed a social media ban for under-15s on July 21, 2026, a flagship reform from President Emmanuel Macron’s final term. On August 14, 2026, the Constitutional Council struck down its core prohibition, ruling that it restricted children’s freedom of expression far more than it needed to.
The vote had looked like a landmark. The Senate approved the bill first, then the National Assembly passed it the same day by 279 votes to 81. The Guardian reported it as the first ban of its kind in an EU country.
Macron hailed it in a video posted on social media. “France is leading the way in Europe when it comes to protecting our children and teenagers,” he said, calling the vote “a major step forward.”
He added on X 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.” He wanted the ban enforced by September.
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 rule would have reached existing accounts from January 2027.
Digital minister Anne Le Hénanff said the platforms would carry the burden. Age-verification tools already existed, she said, and others were in the works. “For four months, all of us in France will have to prove our age,” she told journalists. “If someone is under 15, the account will be closed.” She also promised that users’ personal data would be protected.
The text exempted services such as online encyclopedias and educational platforms. It set no penalties for children or parents. It also carried a ban on mobile phones in high schools, timed to start with the French school year.
“The major platforms are, in my view, largely ready,” assembly member Laure Miller told AFP.
The Senate had wanted something gentler: blacklist platforms deemed harmful to child development and let teens use the rest with parental consent. Centrist senator Catherine Morin-Desailly said that route would take longer, needing fresh consultations with the European Commission, and carried a “small risk” of non-compliance with European law. The Assembly’s blanket ban won out anyway. Some critics on the left worried about age verification, the speed of the rollout, circumvention and privacy.
The push had a backdrop. France’s public health watchdog had said TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram were harmful to adolescents, particularly girls, while noting they were not the only reason for declining mental health. The European Commission was weighing its own restrictions after France, Greece and Spain pushed for limits, and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said children should have “phased and gradual access” to social media. Australia got there first in December 2025, ordering major platforms to remove accounts held by under-16s or face heavy fines.
France has a habit of legislating on everyday life, having also banned supermarkets from tossing edible food.
The Constitutional Council steps in
The bill never got to September. Groups of at least 60 deputies from La France Insoumise and Socialistes et apparentés challenged it on July 23 and 24, according to the Council’s decision.
On August 14, the Council struck down the bill’s central article. It ruled the ban “constitutes an infringement that is neither appropriate, necessary, nor proportionate” to under-15s’ freedom of expression and communication, the BBC reported.
Privacy was the other problem. Reuters reported that the Council found the law failed “to specify the conditions and limits” for providing proof of age, and lacked the legal safeguards privacy requires. The Council also noted that making everyone, adults included, prove their age raised privacy concerns of its own.
A summary from the European Audiovisual Observatory said the law 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.
With the prohibition gone, the September 1 and January 2027 timetable had nothing left to run on. The school phone ban survived, and the Observatory said the school-hours rule 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 rewrite the legislation to address the Council’s concerns.
