France’s ban on social networks for under-15s hits the European Commission

France’s planned ban on social networks for under-15s has run into a major hurdle - and the hold-up is in Brussels.

Presented as the last major society-focused bill of Emmanuel Macron’s current term, the measure now looks far less certain. France had hoped to bar under-15s from social networks from September, but the European Commission is resisting.

Why the European Commission is pushing back: the Digital Services Act (DSA)

In the Commission’s view, the draft law clashes with EU law. Specifically, France would be at odds with the Digital Services Act (DSA) - the European Union’s digital rulebook - as Thomas Regnier, a Commission spokesperson, explained to AFP:

"We fully share the objective of the French authorities: minors must be better protected online. The Commission’s opinion helps ensure that any national measure is effective and complies with EU law. We must minimise fragmentation of national systems, which could create legal uncertainty or weaken enforcement of the law."

France must go back to the drawing board

The ban on social networks for minors was designed to take effect from September. After being adopted at first reading in the National Assembly, it was intended to impose a single restriction across all platforms, without distinction.

The Senate, however, reworked the text by introducing a significant nuance: two categories of platforms - those considered dangerous and those seen as less problematic. Under that approach, ARCOM would have been the body giving an opinion on how platforms should be classified, rather than Brussels. That is precisely where it conflicts with the DSA: put simply, supervision is meant to sit at European level, not be handled country by country.

The government had already warned that this kind of differentiation would cause problems at EU scale - and it appears to have been right. MPs and senators will now have to reach a compromise in a joint committee, using Brussels’ view as the basis for reworking the bill.

Protecting minors from social networks and screen time: a wider political push

Shielding minors from social networks and excessive screen time is a task that is both vast and essential. A few weeks ago, Education Minister Édouard Geffray said smartphones would be banned in upper secondary schools from the start of the school year - a strong step intended to protect young people from the harmful effects linked to social networks.

For the government, tackling these platforms is not a minor skirmish; it is framed as an issue of both sovereignty and society. A few months ago, Emmanuel Macron stated:

"The brains of our children and teenagers are not for sale, their emotions are not for sale or to be manipulated, neither by American platforms nor by Chinese algorithms."

This setback at European level does not end the argument - far from it. More and more EU countries want to legislate to ban social networks, which could encourage the Commission to relax its rules. For its part, France will have to rethink its law.