After the Nogent tragedy, Emmanuel Macron reiterated on the set of France 2 on Tuesday, June 10, that he fully intended to ban social media for those under 15. "We must ban social media for those under 15," he declared, adding that "we can't wait any longer." While the President of the Republic had already spoken out in favor of banning platforms for young people, the Head of State specified, for the first time, a deadline: "I'm giving us a few months to mobilize at European level, otherwise I'll negotiate with the Europeans so that we can start doing it in France," he emphasized, suggesting that he fully intended to implement the measure if the European Union was slow to do so.
This statement came after a supervisor was fatally stabbed by a 14-year-old student outside a middle school in Haute-Marne. And in this case, the Head of State did not hesitate to point the finger at social media. A year earlier, in June 2024, Emmanuel Macron had already called for a ban on social media for children under 15, as well as a ban on phones for children under 11. There is already a digital majority law that requires parental consent for registration for those under 15, but the measure has not been implemented.
How can this ban be implemented?
It remains to be seen how this ban could be implemented. For the president, "all these platforms have the ability to verify age through facial recognition or identifiers (...). "We know how to do facial recognition," insisted Emmanuel Macron, referring to what currently exists for pornographic sites, which are now required to verify the age of their visitors in France.
While Pornhub, Youporn, and Redtube have entered into a standoff with the French authorities, refusing to apply these new requirements, other platforms have implemented a system for verifying the age of Internet users.
Last month, Clara Chappaz, the Minister Delegate for AI and Digital Affairs, explained in La Tribune, that the country was giving itself "three months" to find a "European agreement" with its "European partners." The idea: to force social networks to verify the age of adolescents because "social networks, before 15, it's a no-go." Invited to the microphone of Franceinfo on April 30, the minister had affirmed that "protecting the youngest from the use [of social networks] is a political priority." For the politician, "it's a major health issue for our young people."
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