France's Parliament has passed a bill banning social media access for children under 15, making it the first European country to do so. The legislation still needs approval from France's Constitutional Council, a body that checks whether new laws comply with the French Constitution, before it can actually take effect. Parliament passed it on July 21, 2026, with a committee giving its approval the day before (Reuters, The Guardian, Engadget).

President Emmanuel Macron has called for the law to be enforced by the start of the school year in September 2026. He is also pushing for other European Union countries to adopt similar measures (Reuters, Engadget).

ARCOM, France's agency that oversees digital communications, will enforce the ban. The approach involves a blacklist — a list of social networks that are blocked for anyone under 15. The French Senate adopted this approach, and the European Commission (the EU's executive body) gave it the green light on July 8, 2026 (Engadget, Sénat). The Commission's approval was required because the blacklist had to pass EU rules that govern trade and competition within the single market before France could use it.

The bill will be introduced in two stages, according to The Guardian (The Guardian). MP Laure Miller and several colleagues introduced the legislation, officially registered as proposition de loi n° 2610 in the 17th legislature of the French National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale, Assemblée Nationale). The Senate modified the bill during the legislative process (Assemblée Nationale).

This new bill builds on an earlier effort. In July 2023, France passed a law known as the "loi Marcangeli" that set a "digital majority" — a minimum age of 15 for accessing social media, similar to how there's a legal age for driving or voting. But that law was never actually enforced. A French Senate session on March 31, 2026 openly discussed this fact (Sénat). The session focused on the gap between passing a law and making it work in practice, which is the gap the new bill is trying to close.

The 2023 law has been amended twice since then. A law passed on May 21, 2024 (LOI n° 2024-449) modified parts of the digital majority framework, with some changes taking effect on February 13, 2026 and others on July 18, 2026 (Légifrance). Another law from April 22, 2024 (LOI n° 2024-364) also references the digital majority framework, with a version effective July 12, 2026 (Légifrance). A related bill (n° 2718) was also proposed to ban digital features designed to keep minors hooked on apps (Assemblée Nationale).

France is not alone in this direction. Australia passed a social media ban for children in 2024, setting a precedent that other democracies are now building on (Engadget).

The broader context here is a regulatory system still finding its footing. France has spent three years passing digital-majority legislation that never took effect, amending it twice, getting EU-level clearance for an enforcement mechanism, and now passing a standalone ban that itself faces another review before it can be used. Each step has narrowed the gap between what lawmakers intended and what actually happens, but the gap has not fully closed. The Constitutional Council review is the next hurdle. After that, ARCOM has to figure out how to make the blacklist work in practice.

For social media companies operating in the EU, the implications are concrete. France's blacklist — approved by the European Commission — gives other EU countries a template they could copy under existing trade rules, especially if Macron's push for EU-wide adoption gains support. The two-stage rollout gives platforms limited time to get ready, and because ARCOM rather than the platforms themselves is responsible for enforcement, the model shifts from companies policing themselves to the government doing it directly.

Whether the September 2026 target holds depends on how quickly the Constitutional Council acts and whether ARCOM is ready to put the blacklist into operation. The loi Marcangeli's failure to take effect is a cautionary precedent: passing a digital majority law is one thing, making it stick is another.