French President Emmanuel Macron said late Tuesday that he will ban social media for under-15s in France “in the coming months” if progress isn’t forthcoming at EU level.
Greece, backed by France and Spain, is spearheading efforts to get the EU to significantly limit the amount of time teenagers can spend online. But Macron, speaking to the French public after the murder of a teaching assistant in a high school Tuesday morning, wants to move faster.
“We cannot wait,” Macron said, speaking on France 2 after the killing in Nogent, Haute-Marne.
He also announced that age verification will soon be imposed in France on sites selling knives online, similar to measures that currently apply to pornographic sites.
“A 15-year-old will no longer be able to buy a knife online. That means we’re going to impose massive financial sanctions and bans,” he promised. Earlier, Prime Minister François Bayrou had announced he wanted to quickly take steps to ban the sale of “all knives” to minors.
Later in the evening, posting on X, Macron said: “I’m banning social media for children under 15. Platforms have the ability to verify age. Let’s do it.”
French authorities are already progressing with efforts to force certain social media sites — including X, Reddit, Bluesky and Mastodon — to introduce age verification, by classifying them as pornographic websites.
French measures forcing porn sites to verify their users’ ages came into effect on June 7, prompting the world’s largest porn website, Pornhub, to stop operating in France. Demand for virtual private network services, which allow users to trick websites into thinking they are in a different location, immediately surged.
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