French President Emmanuel Macron stated he desires his authorities to fast-track the authorized course of to be certain that a ban on social media use for kids below the age of 15 could be in place earlier than the beginning of the following college 12 months in September.
“The brains of our children and adolescents are not for sale,” Macron stated in a video launched late Saturday by NCS’s French affiliate BFMTV. “Their emotions are not for sale or to be manipulated, whether by American platforms or Chinese algorithms.”
“We are banning social media for under-15s and we are going to ban mobile phones in our high schools. I believe this is a clear rule – clear for our teenagers, clear for families, clear for teachers,” he confused.
A rising variety of Western nations are in search of to enact sweeping laws to safeguard younger folks from the potential harms of social media, following Australia’s landmark legislation in December that bans below 16s from having accounts on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and different platforms.
Macron’s announcement got here days after the British authorities stated it’s contemplating a variety of measures aiming to maintain kids secure on-line, together with banning using social media for under-16s.
The French ban is being spearheaded by Laure Miller, a lawmaker from Macron’s Renaissance social gathering. In an interview with the tv channel related to the French parliament, Miller stated the federal government wanted to take motion as a result of “right now, there is no age verification whatsoever.”
“You can enter any date of birth and access the platform. What we want to impose on platforms, by strictly enforcing the European Digital Services Act (DSA), is real age verification when you access a social network. That changes everything, because users will actually have to prove whether they are over or under-15,” she stated.
While conceding that there’ll “always be ways” to circumvent the restrictions, she stated France ought to “at least put our foot in the door when it comes to protecting minors online.”
Following Australia’s ban, greater than 4.7 social media accounts deemed to be held by below 16s have been deactivated or eliminated, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated final month.
Albanese’s message to youngsters
At the time, Albanese informed NCS his authorities had carried out the ban as a result of “we know that social harm is being caused, and therefore we have a responsibility as a government to respond to the pleas of parents and respond as well to the campaign of young people saying, just let us be kids.”
On the eve of the ban, Albanese addressed Australian teenagers in a video, urging them to “start a new sport, learn a new instrument, or read that book that has been sitting there on your shelf for some time.”
Elon Musk, the proprietor of X, signaled opposition to the ban in 2024, saying the proposal appears “like a backdoor war to control access to the Internet by all Australians.” X has, nonetheless, complied with the measures.
An impetus for the Australian ban was a ebook by the American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, which was printed in 2024. When the spouse of South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas learn “The Anxious Generation” – which argues that social media has corroded the psychological well being of youngsters – she started to give her husband a nightly abstract of its contents. “You better bloody do something about this,” she informed Malinauskas, who quickly commissioned a draft legislation on potential options within the state, which later grew to become a federal marketing campaign.
“The basic argument of the book is that we’ve overprotected our children in the real world and we’ve under-protected them online. We were wrong on both points.” Haidt informed NCS in 2024. As an answer, the ebook proposed a ban on smartphones in faculties and on social media for under-16s.