The French Parliament recently (and overwhelmingly) passed a law banning children under the age of fifteen from setting up social media accounts. The new law accompanies one that bans middle and high school students from bringing smartphones into schools.
A Popular Idea
The idea of restricting social media for teenagers enjoys international support. Other European Union (EU) countries are considering similar laws, as are several US states. In 2024, Australia passed the similar Social Media Minimum Age Act, which went into effect in January 2025.
Over the past several years, so much evidence of the harms of social media has been compiled that no one can pretend that it is not a problem. Increasing suicide rates among teens, declining academic achievement and a greater sense of social isolation are all related, if not directly caused by social media. Factoring in the rapidly increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) threatens to make these issues even more extreme.
According to the National Catholic Register, the French government envisions using a “double anonymity” process that it shares with the EU. The principle is that a “trusted third party” would be deputized to verify age from a variety of possible sources. The third party would then issue an “anonymous token,” presumably virtual, which could then be used to open accounts. The platform operators, presumably, would have no access to the individual users’ identification information.
Are They Enforceable?
While the motivations behind these new laws are laudable, the real test is whether they can be effectively enforced.
The large social media platforms are well-established and popular. It had its origins with a now-defunct platform called Six Degrees in 1997. CompuServe and America Online (AOL) contained some elements of social media at least a decade before that. Facebook goes back to 2004, Instagram to 2010 and TikTok to 2016.
To achieve its goals, such a law needs to clear two other hurdles—the multinational companies behind the platforms, and the teenagers whose Internet use the law seeks to regulate. Hitherto fore, governments have shown little success in countering either problem.
The Companies and the Users
While the companies make an occasional nod to protecting children, those under eighteen represent a massive audience that the platform operators don’t want to lose. With massive bankrolls available for both marketing and legal counsel, the idea that they will use any method they can to attract young users is virtually certain. At the same time, they have the technical knowledge to subvert the intent of the regulations while remaining barely within the law.
In carrying out these goals, the companies have an army of extremely willing co-conspirators, the users themselves. These platforms have become a part of daily life. Many were introduced to them by parents, older siblings and friends when they were still very young. Despite its dangers, social media is endlessly entertaining. Their ease of operation conveys a subliminal message to users that they are in control and can, therefore, handle the consequences. By the time the risks become obvious and unavoidable, these platforms have an air of inevitability. For many young people, abandoning them is to leave a big part of themselves behind.
Trust and Reliability
There are other issues as well. It is easy to imagine the double-anonymity system being overwhelmed by eager teens. If it is slow to respond to their demands, some of the more intelligent of these young people will discover ways around the software. Once discovered, such “hacks” will spread like wildfire.
Another concern is the amount of information that the trusted third parties will accumulate and where it will be stored. Most likely, such functionaries will either be government employees or contractors. Contact between them and the teens that they are trying to protect will itself take place online. For those employees or contractors to be accountable, the material behind their determinations will need to be stored somewhere. No one pretends that the storage will be done on pieces of paper in locked filing cabinets; records will be stored on computer hard drives. Unfortunately, computers can be broken into and the information they contain used by the unscrupulous for their own purposes.
The French and European attempts to contain the social media problem are, as mentioned before, laudable. It would be wonderful to report that these efforts “turned the corner” on a vexing social issue. However, any such blanket statement requires much more study before such hopes can become reality. The issue comes down to a single question; is a partial solution not preferable to no solution at all?
First published on TFP.org.
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