The French Parliament has given final approval to a ban on social media for children under 15, making France the first European Union member state to adopt a blanket age limit for the platforms.
The National Assembly passed the compromise text by 279 votes to 81 on July 21, hours after the Senate had approved it. Left-wing deputies from La France Insoumise voted against.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has made the ban a flagship measure of his final term in office, called the vote “a major step forward”. He said the Constitutional Council must now rule on the text before the measure can be put into effect.
The French Government wants the law in place for the start of the school year in September. New accounts are to face age checks from September 1, while the restriction is due to apply to existing accounts from January 1, 2027.
The bill reached that point only after Brussels intervened. In a formal opinion issued in early July the European Commission found that a version passed by the Senate overlapped with the Digital Services Act (DSA) and had to be revised.
That version would have split platforms into two categories, placing those judged harmful on a blacklist while leaving others accessible with parental consent. The Senate argued the Commission had not objected to the blacklist itself but to provisions handing excessive powers to Arcom, the French audiovisual and digital regulator.
Centrist senator Catherine Morin-Desailly, who steered the bill through the upper house, said the blacklist carried a “small risk” of breaching European law. Lawmakers dropped it and returned to a general age threshold, with exemptions for online encyclopaedias, educational and scientific directories and open-source software platforms.
The text does not set out how ages are to be verified, leaving the method to the platforms themselves. Arcom is to enforce the rules.
French digital minister Anne Le Hénanff said the timetable was realistic because verification tools already existed. “If someone is under 15, the account will be closed,” she told journalists.
The law also bans mobile phones in lycées, France’s upper secondary schools, extending a prohibition applied in primary and middle schools since 2018.
Paris has moved ahead of Brussels, which is preparing its own restrictions. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has backed a minimum age for the platforms, said on July 13 that children should have “phased and gradual access” to social media, with a legislative proposal expected after the summer.
France follows Australia, where a world-first ban on under-16s took effect in December 2025.
