Australia banned under-16s from social media in December and purged 4.7 million accounts. France followed in January, voting to ban under-15s and smartphones in high schools.
Spain’s Pedro Sánchez declared social media “a failed state” and announced under-16s would be barred. Denmark, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Germany are drafting similar laws.
The European Parliament voted 483 to 92 urging a continent-wide minimum age of 16. Malaysia and Brazil passed their own versions. A global norm is forming in real time.
The science is stark. The average teenager spends 3.5 hours daily on social media — past the threshold the U.S. Surgeon General linked to double the risk of depression and anxiety.
A WHO study of 280,000 adolescents across 44 countries found problematic use jumped from 7% to 11% between 2018 and 2022, girls disproportionately affected. Pew Research reports 48% of American teens believe social media harms their peers, up from 32% in 2022.
Macron framed the French vote as sovereignty: “Our children’s brains are not for sale — neither to American platforms nor to Chinese networks.”
Europe Wants to Take Social Media Away From Its Children. Big Tech Is Furious
The backlash was explosive. Elon Musk called Sánchez a “tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain.” Telegram’s Pavel Durov warned the bans were “steps toward total control.” Spain’s far-right Vox opposes the measure.
Youth activists say the bans miss the point: “The addiction doesn’t stop at 15 or 16,” argues Marc Damie of France’s Ctrl+Alt+Reclaim movement — the real problem is platform design, not access.
The same week, French police raided X’s offices over algorithm manipulation, and Britain’s data regulator opened a probe into Grok for generating explicit images of minors.
Enforcement remains the open question. The EU is exploring digital identity tools that confirm age without revealing personal data, but none exist at scale.
The Digital Services Act was supposed to force platforms to change — it barely has, which is why capitals are going it alone, producing a patchwork: 15 in France, 16 in Spain, undefined elsewhere.
The era of self-regulation is over. The fight now is whether protecting children online becomes a universal standard or another front in the war between democracies and Silicon Valley.