France’s Constitutional Council has struck down legislation banning social media access for children under 15, preventing a flagship measure backed by President Emmanuel Macron from taking effect as planned at the start of the new school year. The ruling, issued on Aug. 14, found that the blanket restriction imposed an excessive burden on fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression and communication.
The decision does not reject the principle of stronger protections for children online. Instead, it exposes the legal difficulty of imposing a uniform age-based prohibition across a wide range of digital services while also protecting the rights and privacy of minors. For France, the ruling shifts the immediate policy question from whether children should receive greater protection to how such protection can be designed to satisfy constitutional and European legal requirements.
Parliament had approved the measure in July after months of political debate, with the National Assembly voting 279-81 and the Senate 243-2 on the final legislation. The law would have prevented children under 15 from accessing social media, with restrictions on new accounts scheduled for September and the deactivation of existing accounts subsequently. It also included restrictions on mobile-phone use in high schools.
The legislation was part of a broader European effort to address concerns about children's exposure to harmful online content, addictive platform design, cyberbullying and other risks. France's approach was unusually broad because it sought to establish a general prohibition rather than limiting restrictions to particular platforms or categories of content. Australia has already introduced a comparable age-based restriction, while several European countries have been examining different forms of limits on minors' access to social media.
The constitutional challenge had been foreshadowed by France's own highest administrative court. In January, the Conseil d'État examined an earlier version of the legislation and warned that a general and absolute prohibition could raise proportionality concerns because it would restrict children's freedom of communication and information regardless of the nature of a platform or its content. It recommended a more graduated system, including targeted restrictions on services considered particularly harmful and parental authorization for other services.
That earlier assessment is important because it shows that the central legal issue was not simply whether the state could regulate children's use of social media. It was whether the chosen restriction was sufficiently necessary and proportionate to its stated objective. The Conseil d'État also identified potential complications under the European Union's Digital Services Act, particularly where national rules would effectively impose obligations on platforms operating across borders.
Age verification presents a second major challenge. A nationwide prohibition would require platforms to determine which users are under 15, raising questions about how identity or age information is collected, processed and protected. Earlier parliamentary discussions and legal assessments highlighted the tension between effective age controls and privacy, particularly because systems designed to verify minors could potentially affect users more broadly. The Constitutional Council's ruling therefore places limits on the government's ability to pursue child protection through a measure that could also affect wider rights.
For Macron's government, the ruling is a setback but not necessarily the end of the policy. The president has said he remains committed to an under-15 restriction and wants a revised proposal that complies with constitutional and European requirements, with a possible new measure targeted for consideration by spring 2027.
The broader significance extends beyond France. Governments across Europe are confronting the same policy problem: platforms operate across national borders, while child-protection rules remain largely national and must coexist with EU digital regulation and fundamental-rights protections. France's experience demonstrates that political support for restricting children's access does not by itself resolve the legal questions surrounding scope, proportionality, age verification and parental authority.
For now, the planned French ban cannot proceed in its enacted form. The government is expected to examine a revised framework, while the unresolved issues include how narrowly any future restrictions should be targeted, what age-verification safeguards can satisfy privacy requirements, and how national measures can remain compatible with EU digital law. The Constitutional Council's decision has therefore moved France's debate from implementation to redesign, with the next legislative proposal likely to determine whether the government's child-protection objective can be reconciled with the rights the court has sought to protect.
