A reconciliation committee of France’s Parliament approved a landmark bill on July 20, 2026 that would ban children and teenagers under the age of 15 from accessing social media platforms. The cross-party joint committee made up of seven members of the National Assembly and seven senators settled months of legislative dispute over the scope and reach of the ban, clearing the way for final parliamentary votes as early as Tuesday. The reconciled text is scheduled for debate in the lower house before moving to the Senate. French President Emmanuel Macron has requested the legislation be fast-tracked and has said publicly he wants the ban in force before the start of the new school year in early September 2026. If enacted, France would become the first country in Europe to put such a ban in place following Australia, which enacted the world’s first social media age restriction for under-16s in December 2025.
According to the draft passed by the committee, France’s Information Technology Minister will be in charge of developing an official list of social networks subject to the ban. Social media platforms will be forced to implement age verification mechanisms that are approved by France’s national privacy regulator, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL). The measure also includes a separate provision that prohibits the use of smartphones in French high schools. Platforms that fail to comply with verification standards would face penalties under the legislation, while enforcement details are still being worked out before the full parliamentary vote.
“A reconciliation committee of France’s Parliament agreed on a bill on Monday to ban access to social media for those under 15 years of age. French President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants the ban to be in force by the start of the school year in early September.”~Reuters
Following Australia’s Lead But With a Stricter Age Threshold:
France is explicitly positioning its legislation as a follow-on to Australia’s December 2025 law, which set the age threshold at 16 and covered platforms including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Snap’s Snapchat, ByteDance’s TikTok, and Alphabet’s YouTube. France’s proposed threshold of 15 is one year lower, making it technically stricter than the Australian model. However, Australia’s first compliance report released by the country’s eSafety Commissioner in March 2026 found that several major platforms were still falling short of the law’s requirements three months after it came into force.
The regulator said it assesses compliance based on whether platforms have implemented effective and layered safeguards, not simply on whether individual underage users still manage to access the platform. That finding is a relevant early warning for France as it moves toward enacting a similar framework: passing the law and enforcing it are two very different challenges, particularly given the scale and technical sophistication of the platforms involved.
“France’s parliament is set to approve a social media ban for children under 15 on Tuesday after lawmakers from the upper and lower houses reached a compromise on the bill’s text Monday. If the bill is approved, France will become the first country in Europe to put such a ban in place.”~France 24
Macron Has Been Building European Support for a Bloc-Wide Age Limit:
The French bill does not exist in isolation. President Macron has spent months lobbying for a coordinated European approach to restricting children’s access to social media, and his push has found receptive ears at the top of the EU’s institutional structure. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has publicly supported limiting children’s access to social media across all 27 EU member states.
Macron has used the French legislation as a proof-of-concept argument showing that such a ban can be legislated at the national level while simultaneously building the case for a harmonised EU standard. His urgency on the issue was sharpened after a fatal school stabbing in eastern France in April 2025 that prompted a national debate about social media’s role in youth violence and radicalisation. France’s public health watchdog has separately concluded that some social media platforms are detrimental to adolescents, with the impact being especially severe among girls.
“A cross-party committee in France’s Parliament approved a compromise bill on Monday that would bar children under 15 from social media, pushing one of Europe’s most far-reaching online-safety measures towards a final vote before lawmakers break for summer.”~The Next Web
Age Verification and Enforcement Are the Hard Part:
The most technically difficult aspect of the French bill is not the ban itself, but the age verification requirement. The regulation requires platforms to use verified age-checking methods that fulfill the CNIL’s criteria, rather than self-declaration processes that allow a youngster to input a bogus birth date. The practical implementation of those precise technological standards has yet to be determined.
The challenge is that strong age verification systems capable of reliably distinguishing a 14-year-old from a 16-year-old at scale either require users to submit identity documents or biometric data, or rely on third-party verification services all of which carry their own privacy implications for the very children the law is designed to protect. Australia’s experience is instructive: even with a law on the books and a regulatory body actively pursuing compliance, the eSafety Commissioner found meaningful gaps just three months after the law took effect.
The deadline for platforms to develop and certify compliant systems is quite tight for France, which plans to deploy by September 2026 possibly only weeks after the law is passed. Whether the law succeeds in its current form or whether enforcement details are changed before it reaches Macron’s desk will be decided by the lower house vote on Tuesday and the Senate’s following deliberation.
“France’s parliamentary reconciliation committee has approved a bill banning social media for under-15s. Platforms must set up CNIL-approved age verification systems. The IT minister will draw up a list of platforms covered. Smartphones in high schools will also be banned. Vote expected Tuesday.”~Medianama
