France cannot prohibit all children under 15 from accessing social networks, rules the Constitutional Council

The French Constitutional Council blocked the general ban that would have prevented minors under 15 from accessing social networks, considering that the measure disproportionately restricts freedom of expression and communication. The judges acknowledged that protecting children from addiction, isolation, pornography, harassment, and fraud could justify restrictions on certain online services, but they decided that the French law covered too many platforms without differentiating their risks and would have required even adults to prove their age without the legislation establishing sufficient guarantees for privacy.

In short

1. The Constitutional Council declared unconstitutional the article that prohibited, in principle, access for all minors under 15 to online social network services.

2. The judges accepted that protecting children from addiction, isolation, pornography, harassment, and fraud could justify restrictions, but they considered that the law did not sufficiently differentiate platforms based on content, functionalities, and risk levels.

3. The ban did not allow for an assessment based on the age and maturity of the child and did not provide parents with the opportunity to authorize access to certain services in the minor's interest.

4. The Council found that applying the ban would require verifying the age of all users, including adults, without the law establishing sufficient conditions and guarantees for protecting privacy.

5. At the EU level, the Commission is pursuing a responsibility-based approach for platforms, reducing designs that can create addiction, and a European age verification solution that allows demonstrating an age threshold without unnecessary disclosure of identity.

The French law aimed to introduce a general rule stating that minors under 15 could not access social network services provided by online platforms. The Constitutional Council was seized after the law was adopted by two groups of deputies, who specifically challenged the effects of the ban on freedom of expression, the role of parents, and the data protection necessary for age verification.

The judges did not reject the objective pursued by the legislator. In its decision, the Council explicitly recognizes that certain characteristics of social networks can expose children to addiction, isolation, pornography, harassment, and fraud, and that protecting the best interests of the child can justify limiting access to online services. The identified problem is how France transformed this objective into a ban applicable to a very broad category of services and all minors under the same age threshold.

The definition used by the law covered platforms that allow users to contact, communicate, share content, and discover other users or materials. The ban was not conditioned by the specific functionalities of the platform, the type of content, the existence of a demonstrated risk, or the measures that the service had already adopted to protect minors.

The law provided exceptions for online encyclopedias, educational and scientific resources, and certain platforms for developing and distributing free software or educational digital projects. However, the Council considered that the exceptions were too narrow, as collaborative services for information, entertainment, or mutual assistance, communication applications, games with significant social functionalities, and even services developed in connection with educational activities could still fall under the ban.

Under these conditions, the ban could block minors' access to services for which the risk to their health or safety had not been established. The Council linked this issue to freedom of expression and communication, emphasizing the role that online services play in expressing ideas, circulating opinions, and participating in democratic life.

Protection also applies to minors. The legislator can introduce restrictions for children, but these must be necessary, adapted, and proportional to the pursued objective. In the case of the French law, the same rule was applied to all minors under 15 without an assessment that took into account differences in age, maturity, family situation, or the characteristics of the service used.

An eight-year-old child and a teenager close to 15 were thus subjected to the same ban, and parents had no mechanism to decide, after assessing the risks and guarantees of a service, that access was in the child's interest. The Council considered that this lack of differentiation contributes to the disproportionate nature of the measure.

The issue of age verification became the second major reason for rejecting the system. A platform cannot apply a ban under 15 without being able to determine whether the user is below or above this threshold, which means that the mechanism does not only concern children.

The Council observes that any person wishing to use the respective services, including an adult, must practically be able to demonstrate that they exceed the age limit. However, the French law did not establish the conditions and limits under which this proof should be requested and did not provide the legal guarantees deemed necessary to protect privacy.

This part of the ruling places the French case directly at the center of a rapidly developing European debate. The European Union is trying to solve the same technical problem – how can a platform know that the user has exceeded a certain age threshold – without turning verification into a general identification system for individuals on the internet.

The European Commission has developed a harmonized age verification solution that is technically ready by April 2026 and can be adapted by member states and market operators. The principle is that the user can demonstrate that they meet an age condition without the platform automatically receiving the name, full date of birth, identity document, or information about other services that the person uses. The Commission is pursuing the availability of robust and interoperable solutions across the EU by the end of 2026.

However, age verification is only one component of the European approach. The Digital Services Act imposes on platforms accessible to minors the obligation to ensure a high level of privacy protection, safety, and security, and the Commission's guidelines for protecting minors detail how these obligations should be applied in practice. Brussels emphasizes the safe configuration of minors' accounts, recommendation systems, unwanted contacts, reporting and blocking mechanisms, interface design, and features that can encourage excessive use.

The difference compared to the model now rejected in France is significant. The European regime primarily starts from the risk that the service creates and the obligation of the platform to reduce it, instead of treating all social networks and all minors under a certain age in the same way. A platform used by children must analyze how its design, algorithms, recommendations, and functionalities can affect the health, safety, and well-being of minors and adopt measures proportional to these risks.

The Commission has already begun to use these tools against some of the largest platforms. In April 2026, Brussels reached a preliminary conclusion that Instagram and Facebook had not sufficiently identified and reduced the risks related to access for children under 13 to their services. The issue was not the existence of a European ban for this age category, but the fact that Meta states in its own terms that the services are intended for persons at least 13 years old, and the Commission preliminarily considers that the company's measures do not sufficiently prevent access for younger children and do not manage the resulting risks.

In July 2026, the Commission went further and made preliminary findings that the design of Instagram and Facebook would violate the DSA due to features that could encourage compulsive use. The investigation concerns elements such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, notifications, and highly personalized recommendation systems and explicitly analyzes their impact on minors and other vulnerable users. The findings are preliminary, and the procedure against Meta continues.

Brussels is thus seeking to shift a significant part of the responsibility from the child and family to the company that designs the service. In this logic, protecting a minor is not limited to asking whether they can open an account or not, but includes how the account is configured, what content is recommended to them, who they can contact, how easily they can report abuses, and whether the platform's mechanisms are designed to artificially extend the time spent in the service.

This approach does not exclude the use of age thresholds. The European solution can be used where legislation or the nature of the service requires demonstrating a minimum age, and the Commission is trying to provide the technical infrastructure through which member states and platforms can apply such rules without excessive data collection. However, Brussels has not established a general European ban on social networks for all children under a certain age.

France notified its project to the European Commission within the European procedure for technical regulations, and the notification documents show that the French authorities were trying to build national restrictions in an area already regulated by the DSA. The French process thus had to take into account both the distribution of competences between national authorities and the Commission, as well as the European standards regarding platforms and age verification.

The decision of the Constitutional Council now adds a second level of constraint. Even if a solution for age verification is technically available and compatible with the European framework, a national law must explain why limiting access is necessary for the targeted services, distinguish between risk levels, and establish applicable guarantees for users.

The French decision does not prevent the adoption of new measures to protect children nor does it state that an age threshold is unconstitutional in any situation. On the contrary, the Council states that protecting minors can justify restrictions on the freedom of access to certain online services, but rejects a general ban that does not sufficiently take into account the characteristics of the service and the child's situation.

For the European debate, this distinction is important. Member states continue to seek national solutions to limit children's access to platforms deemed dangerous, while the Commission seeks to create a common framework in which age verification can be done without unnecessary identification of the user, and platforms are required to reduce the risks generated by their own products.

Brussels' direction thus combines three elements. The first is the ability to credibly determine whether the user has exceeded a certain age threshold without each platform collecting separate documents and identity data. The second is the responsibility of platforms for the design and algorithms that can affect children. The third is proportionality: protective measures must correspond to the risks of the service and not unnecessarily restrict minors' access to information, communication, and online participation.

The French case shows how difficult it becomes to simultaneously apply these objectives. A simple age-based ban may be easier to explain to the public, but it requires verifying a very large number of users and can include services with very different risk profiles. A risk-based approach is more complex but allows differentiation between platforms and shifts a larger part of the protection obligation onto the companies that control the design of the services.

The Constitutional Council did not rule on the other provisions of the law that were not subject to its control and declared unconstitutional the article containing the general ban. France can return with another formulation, but it will have to respond to both the constitutional requirements regarding freedom of communication and privacy, as well as the European framework that is strengthening around the DSA and age verification.

France has been trying for several years to introduce special rules for children's access to social networks, and the initiative from 2026 transformed the 15-year threshold into a general ban provided by law. The Constitutional Council established on August 14 that the chosen formula is contrary to the Constitution because it does not sufficiently differentiate between services and minors and does not provide adequate guarantees for age verification.

At the EU level, the Digital Services Act already imposes specific obligations on platforms accessible to children, and the Commission published in 2025 guidelines dedicated to protecting minors. In 2026, Brussels also moved to the direct application of these obligations in investigations regarding Instagram and Facebook and accelerated the implementation of a European age verification solution that protects users' identities.

The result is the formation of a European model in which age limits can play a role, but protecting children is not built exclusively around access bans. Brussels is simultaneously pursuing age verification, data protection, platform design modification, and holding companies accountable for the risks their services create for minors.