France’s Senate passed a bill on Monday to ban children under 15 from using social media. If the lower house also approves it, France would become another major country after Australia to impose a clear age-based restriction on youth access to social platforms.
According to the report, the law would take effect on Sept. 1. Children under 15 would be barred from opening new social media accounts, while platforms would get an extra four months to close existing accounts. Companies would also need to use age-verification systems approved by France’s privacy regulator.
France’s minister delegate for AI, Clara Chappaz Le Hénanff as rendered in the source as Le Enanfu, described the move as making France the first country in Europe to introduce a “digital age of majority.” The legislation follows public remarks made by President Emmanuel Macron in April, when he called on young people to put down their phones, read more books, and said those under 15 should no longer use social media.
Over the past six months, at least 20 countries have implemented, announced or studied restrictions on minors’ use of social media, with most age thresholds set at 15 or 16. Taiwan has not followed the Australian or French path of a blanket ban, but it has started moving on another track.
Two regulatory models are taking shape
The report says Australia became the first country in the world in December 2025 to ban users under 16 from social media. The measure covers 10 platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch and Kick. Platforms that violate the rules face fines of up to AUD 49.5 million.
Australia uses a flexible “reasonable steps” standard for age verification and does not mandate one specific technology. On the first day of enforcement, though, there was already large-scale circumvention, with teenagers using VPNs and parents’ accounts to get around the restrictions.
Denmark moved next. In November 2025, parties reached a consensus to ban social media use for children under 15. Legislation is expected to be completed by mid-2026, together with an app called “digital evidence” that includes an age-verification function.
At the European Union level, pressure is also building. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to present a legislative proposal this autumn in response to an expert group recommendation to ban use by children under 13. As of early 2026, 13 EU countries had committed to follow with similar action: Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Luxembourg, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland and Greece.
Still, the European Commission said on July 6, 2026 that France’s law was “not fully in line with current EU rules,” while continuing to support the broader direction of the initiative.
The report groups the current trend into two main models. One is the Australia-France model: a direct age ban with an explicit threshold and a prohibition on account creation. The other is a package built around age verification and access restrictions, where the state does not ban use outright but identifies users and limits content access by age, blocking access when necessary. Taiwan has chosen the second route.
Taiwan’s draft centers on age identification and access restriction
On April 21, 2026, Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare published draft amendments to the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act and opened a 30-day public comment period. Paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 59 would create an age-identification mechanism. The National Communications Commission, or NCC, would coordinate the establishment of a content protection body to promote age-appropriate identification, while standards, methods, exceptions and technical requirements would be set separately by the NCC together with the Ministry of Digital Affairs.
Paragraph 3 deals with access restriction. If the competent authority finds harmful content, it should notify the platform to remove it and, when necessary, may notify internet access service providers to implement access-limiting measures.
In other words, Taiwan’s approach is not to tell platforms that users under 15 cannot open accounts. It is to build an infrastructure that identifies a user’s age first and then limits access to content accordingly.
The report lists several age-verification methods already common in Taiwan: self-declaration, AI facial age estimation, upload of government identity documents, credit-card checks, and real-name linkage through mobile phone numbers. What these methods share is that they all require users to disclose identity information. That is where the dispute begins.
Criticism focuses on privacy, legal scope and blocking powers
The Judicial Reform Foundation identified three main risks in a public statement. First is privacy. Age verification requires users to reveal who they are, which in practice means large-scale collection of personal data. If that data leaks, the consequences could be severe.
Second is what the group described as overly broad authorization. It said the parent law does not clearly set out a data-minimization principle and does not prohibit secondary use of the information, which it argues runs against the legislative logic of hierarchical legal reservation.
Third is the risk of network blocking. According to the foundation, the article on access restriction lacks due process: no prior review, no public list and no relief mechanism. It has therefore called for Paragraph 3 to be removed.
Amnesty International Taiwan has also voiced concern, saying Article 59 could harm privacy, anonymity and freedom of expression, and could evolve into excessive surveillance and vague censorship.
Lawmakers have already stepped into the debate. The source says fears of a “Great Firewall” scenario in Taiwan are not baseless. In 2025, about 64% of domains blocked in Taiwan under the RPZ mechanism were directly blocked by the government under the Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act. That suggests the infrastructure for access restriction already has precedents in Taiwan and could now be extended into the field of child protection.
Australia’s experience is cited as a warning. A system presented as a way to protect teenagers was bypassed on day one, while adults’ identity data was exposed to the system first. For critics, that is the central gap: the protection goal may fail, while the surveillance infrastructure arrives first.
The real issue may be the infrastructure, not only the ban
The report argues that Taiwan is unlikely to copy the Australia-France style of blanket prohibition. The draft is still in the public consultation stage, and disputes over due process for access restriction remain unresolved across party lines, so the legislative path may not be smooth.
What deserves closer scrutiny, though, is whether the combined system of age verification and access restriction could later be repurposed once it is in place.
A system designed to stop minors from reaching harmful content could also, from a technical standpoint, be used to block political speech or restrict certain media outlets. The difference lies in who controls the switch and whether review and remedy procedures are transparent. That is why the Judicial Reform Foundation is not rejecting child protection itself, but asking for the removal of access-restriction provisions that it says lack due-process safeguards.
The report also notes an industry-side response. As age checks and blocking mechanisms become stricter, some users are being pushed toward social protocols that are harder to police through centralized control, including decentralized social platforms such as Nostr and Bluesky. In the source’s framing, tighter regulation is making decentralized alternatives more attractive.