France's under-15 ban struck down two weeks before it was due to start
A blanket ban goes too far on freedom of expression, France's Constitutional Council ruled, and the age checks behind it came with no privacy safeguards.
On 14 August 2026, France's Constitutional Council struck down the country's under-15 social media ban, ruling that a blanket prohibition was a disproportionate restriction on freedom of expression. Parliament had passed the law on 21 July, making France the first EU country to legislate for one. The ban was due to apply to new accounts from 1 September, and to existing accounts from 1 January 2027.
The Council gave two reasons. The ban covered every service where users can communicate and share content, without separating out the ones where risks to children are actually established, and without leaving room for a child's age, maturity or family circumstances. Second, the law required age checks but set no legal safeguards for the private data those checks collect.
The rest of the law stands, including the ban on phones in French secondary schools. President Emmanuel Macron said he remained "fully determined to see the ban take effect by spring" and asked Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to draft a replacement that answers the ruling.
Why this matters for a UK parent
It changes nothing about the UK timetable. This was a decision about French constitutional law, and the UK's ban rests on powers already passed in the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act, with regulations due before Parliament by Christmas and enforcement from spring 2027.
What travels is the pair of problems the French judges identified, because both are still open here. Ofcom has to tell Parliament by the end of October what counts as an effective age check for 16, and that report has to answer the same question the French law fumbled: how do you verify a teenager's age without building a database of children's identity documents. Our age-checks explainer sets out the methods in contention. The ban hub tracks the dates.
Nothing to do differently. If you were counting on a ban to do the work, France is a reminder that these laws can move. The free controls already on your child's devices don't depend on any of it, and our setup guides cover them.