France is moving fast on kids and social media. Its parliament has approved a ban on social media for children under 15, making France the first country in the European Union to pass such a law.

Lawmakers backed the legislation by 279 votes to 81.

Under the law, children under 15 will be blocked from creating new social media accounts on platforms including TikTok and Snapchat from September. Existing accounts will be blocked from January 2027. The bill also bans cellphones in high school and requires social platforms to introduce age verification checks.

“France is leading the way in Europe when it comes to protecting our children and teenagers,” President Emmanuel Macron said, calling the law’s passage a landmark moment.

Earlier this year, France’s public health watchdog concluded that social media had harmful effects on teenagers’ mental health, especially girls.

Macron has made online child safety a defining issue in the final years of his presidency, and the ban is likely to be one of the last major domestic reforms he pushes through. He will mark a decade in office next year and cannot run again in April’s national election because France has a two consecutive term limit for presidents.

Questions over enforcement are already front and centre. Critics say the biggest challenge will be making the ban work in practice, with doubts about age verification technology and concerns that some teenagers will get around the rules by using VPNs, fake dates of birth, or accounts created by older friends or family members.

Privacy campaigners have also warned that tighter age checks may force users to hand over more personal information. Others argue the ban could push young people to less regulated platforms instead of cutting the time they spend online.

“The global rollout of social media bans represents a serious threat to the freedom and privacy of millions of internet users across the world. Requiring users to upload sensitive ID or biometric information to access social media does not keep children safe, but does introduce serious cybersecurity and privacy risks for all users of all ages,” Maya Thomas, a legal and policy officer at the British organization Big Brother Watch, told CBS News.

“We have already seen in Australia that a social media ban can easily be circumvented, with some children even bypassing age gates by drawing on fake moustaches. Governments wishing to tackle the harmful business practices of social media companies must do so by regulating the companies directly, not by imposing restrictions upon their users,” Thomas said.

Australia’s experience has added to concerns about how practical broad bans are. Australia became the first country to impose a nationwide measure when it banned under-16s from social media at the end of 2025. But about 70 percent of parents polled by Australia’s internet regulator in March said their children were still on the platforms after finding ways around age-gating systems.

The French law includes exemptions for educational platforms and online encyclopedias.

The ban also fits a wider push by France under Macron, alongside some European Union partners, for “digital sovereignty.” That approach aims to make Europe less dependent on American and Chinese technology companies, while taking a tougher regulatory line on the digital economy and supporting European alternatives.

In January, Macron wrote in a post on X that French “children’s brains are not for sale. Neither to American platforms nor to Chinese networks.”

That strategy goes beyond social media. France and Germany recently announced plans to build an alternative to military software supplied by the US firm Palantir, and France’s domestic intelligence service ended its contract with the American tech company earlier this year.

France is the first European Union member state to pass this kind of ban, but it may not be the last. “It is clear we need age-appropriate restrictions to platforms,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last week.

Last month, the UK also announced plans to introduce a ban on social media accounts for under-16s from January 2027. France is now the second country in the world to introduce a nationwide social media ban for children, after Australia.

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