Lack of sleep, loss of focus and exposure to harmful content: concerns over social media's effect on children are growing worldwide and Europe is moving to act. This week, France became the first European Union country to enshrine in law a social media ban for under-15s, to come into force on September 1.
Speaking to The National, Laure Miller, an MP from French President Emmanuel Macron's centrist political group, who introduced the bill, said she was proud of the stance that protecting children's mental health is more important than profit.
“This law is pressuring social media platforms and telling them: 'you don't have total impunity,'” Ms Miller said. Mr Macron has compared social media to a “jungle” that “no sane parent would send their children to”.
A domino effect is expected across the EU's 27 nations, as the European Commission prepares to submit a proposal in September, likely making 13 the minimum age threshold to access social media. Greece and Portugal are among the nations expected to follow France's lead. The UAE was the first Arab state to implement a ban last month.
France's ban is notably different from those adopted in other western countries. EU members cannot create their own lists of banned platforms – that privilege belongs to the bloc's executive arm, the European Commission.
Blanket ban
As a result, France has introduced a blanket ban covering all social media in a measure stricter than in Australia, which last year became the world's first country to implement a ban, restricting access for under-16s to 10 platforms including Facebook and TikTok. The UK is also bringing in a platform-specific ban.
French MP
“Australians implemented a list of banned sites, so young people naturally turned to other platforms to bypass the blacklist,” Ms Miller said. “Australians also opted for an age-estimation system, which placed less of a burden on the platforms. In contrast, we rely on age verification, meaning that tactics like using an AI-altered photo for a selfie simply won't work.”
Because it requires age verification, the social media bans have caused a backlash among conservative commentators, who equate the prohibition with state surveillance. Discussing the UK law, X owner and tech billionaire Elon Musk said last month: “This censorship law is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone.”
Yet in the EU, the age verification platform will not be storing data or handing over personal information to the social media site – it is designed simply to inform whether the user is 15 or older. Ms Miller rejected the criticism, saying: “Our mission is not to become vassals of the Americans, but rather to hold strong positions and values – values that may differ from those of the current US administration.”
Surveillance 'nonsense'
Last year, France, Greece, Denmark, Italy and Spain took part in testing what the European Commission calls “zero knowledge proof technology”, a system for which users prove their age via a national ID app, with no further data exchanged.
“When you hear voices saying our EU age verification app is carried out for mass surveillance purposes, this is complete nonsense,” a European Commission representative said.
“Platforms already have all our data to start with and that data is not stored nor hosted in Europe. They know everything about us ... That is why we have embedded a zero knowledge proof in the age verification app.”
Not all EU countries agree are convinced. Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has said that while she agrees in principle with a ban, it would be too easily circumvented.
Estonia went further, writing to the commission in a letter viewed by The National that it opposed a blanket EU-level ban on social media for minors. “We should not seek to exclude children and young people from the digital society but rather to equip them with the skills and tools needed to navigate it safely and responsibly,” it said.
Among the proposals under consideration by the European Commission is a ban on teenage access to artificial intelligence chatbots, which have raised alarm as young people increasingly turn to machines for emotional support. “We can see that there are already children who have committed suicide because the answers they received from the AI ultimately pointed in that direction,” Ms Miller said.
Expecting children to self-monitor is unreasonable, argue proponents of a ban, with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen comparing it to a seat belt or an airbag, and Ms Miller to a traffic light.
“Of course, there is no way to stop someone from using their 18-year-old brother’s or their parents’ passport to bypass age verification, but I would argue that no prohibition in life is absolute,” Ms Miller said. “If you run a red light on the next street over and there is no police officer around, no one will know you broke the law – yet that is no reason to get rid of the traffic light.”
The toughest to convince might be young Europeans themselves, who spend on average between five and six hours on screens per day. “I’ve had some rather difficult conversations – particularly with high school students who grew up with social media – who argued, 'You can’t give us something and then take it away,' and I fully understand that point of view,” Ms Miller said. “As politicians, our role is also to envision a better society and avoid fatalism.”
