France Passes Under-15 Social Media Ban With Age-Check Details Unresolved

France has approved legislation barring children under 15 from accessing online social networks, creating an enforcement challenge whose technical details remain unresolved. The Senate adopted the final compromise text by 243 votes to two after the National Assembly approved it earlier in July.

The measure applies to accounts created from September 1, 2026. Platforms will have another four months to bring accounts opened before that date into compliance, making January 1, 2027 the practical deadline for existing users.

The law covers online social-network services while carving out exceptions for online encyclopedias, educational or scientific directories, and open-source educational platforms. It prohibits access by users below the threshold, but the final text does not prescribe a particular verification method or assign a specific technical duty to platforms.

The restriction forms part of a wider child-protection bill that also addresses how online services interact with minors. For identity technology providers, the central issue is how platforms can distinguish an eligible user from a child without building new stores of identity documents or biometric data.

That omission leaves an important implementation question for regulators and platforms. Senators discussing the compromise referred to age verification and privacy protections, including an amendment intended to exclude biometric recognition, but the enacted language does not itself define the technology that services must deploy. France has separately been testing privacy-preserving age proofs through France Identité, its government digital identity service.

The distinction between proving age and revealing identity has become central to European online-safety policy. A European Union child-safety panel has favored zero-knowledge proofs over biometric checks, an approach designed to confirm that a user meets an age threshold without sharing a birth date or other identifying information.

France’s law creates one of Europe’s clearest statutory age limits for social media, alongside a planned under-16 restriction in Norway. The French measure is broader than a voluntary platform policy because it establishes a legal duty, although enforcement rules and the approved forms of age evidence still need to be developed.

The implementation choices will determine whether users face document checks, reusable digital credentials, device-based age signals, or another form of assurance. They will also shape how much personal information platforms receive when applying the restriction.

Sources: French Senate debate record, French Senate final text

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team