France, UK and EU Push Social-Media Age Bans for Children, but Early Evidence Questions Impact

Governments are increasingly trying to keep children off social media by law. France moved this summer to limit access for under-15s, following Australia’s lead, though France’s highest court later halted the measure on human-rights grounds. The UK is planning restrictions that would bar under-16s from major services such as Facebook and TikTok beginning in early 2027. The European Union has also signaled it is working toward a region-wide prohibition for children under 15.

But early evidence from the first major test case—Australia, which adopted a ban in 2024—suggests age-based lockouts are porous. One study published this year reported that roughly 80% of teenagers younger than 16 still managed to use platforms that were supposed to be off-limits. Young users have proven inventive, experimenting with tactics ranging from borrowing an older sibling’s face for identity checks to improvising disguises like drawn-on facial hair to defeat facial-analysis tools.

Supporters of bans often respond to this cat-and-mouse dynamic with a call for tougher enforcement and more rigorous verification systems. Yet the very fact that teens are actively looking for loopholes points to a more fundamental issue: blunt age gates are mismatched to how adolescents actually use the internet—and to what they need from it.

Restricting access to mainstream social platforms can also limit young people’s ability to find information and communities that support learning, social development, and identity formation, particularly during adolescence. Tightening the screws further may create unintended consequences. If major platforms become harder to reach, some teens will simply migrate elsewhere—often to less moderated, more precarious parts of the web where harassment, exploitation, and predation risks can be higher.

More aggressive age verification comes with broader tradeoffs, too. Systems designed to eliminate workarounds typically require people to hand over more sensitive data to prove how old they are. That can weaken privacy and security not just for minors, but for everyone using the service, by expanding the amount of personal information collected and stored.

Research into family perspectives suggests many parents and children want protections that are more targeted than blanket prohibitions. One approach would be to curb how platforms collect and monetize young users’ data, reducing incentives that drive engagement-maximizing design. Another would focus on giving families adaptable tools to manage what children see and when they see it, rather than imposing a single legal threshold that flips at age 16.

Age-based bans, in this view, do not necessarily make parenting easier—they may merely delay the hard conversations. If the primary policy tool is “wait until you’re older,” families can wind up with fewer opportunities to help young people practice safer online behavior while they are still developing judgment and digital literacy.

The workarounds themselves also reveal something policymakers rarely acknowledge: when teens try to circumvent restrictions, they are often displaying the same traits adults encourage in other settings—curiosity, experimentation, and independence. Online spaces are where many young people build social skills and test identities; policies that treat them only as passive subjects can miss that reality.

Parents are not uniformly opposed to early, supervised access. Studies of safety interventions have found parents sometimes actively assist with the small deceptions that get children through gates to services they consider important. This pattern is longstanding: research dating back to 2011 documented parents coaching kids around Facebook’s age rules. For some families, the calculation is pragmatic—responsible access can help children connect with peers, discover educational content, and learn safer habits sooner.

When that access is blocked, teens often find substitutes. Sometimes those alternatives are relatively harmless but unconventional, such as chatting through Google Docs or in podcast comment sections. Other times they can be far riskier, exposing young users to environments with fewer safeguards. And preliminary findings after Australia’s ban suggest overall screen time has not dropped substantially; in some cases, it has simply shifted to different online venues.

Why it matters

As more countries pursue age-based social media bans, early results indicate that enforcement will be difficult and may push teens into less regulated spaces. Families, platforms, and regulators will face growing pressure to choose between stronger ID checks—which can erode privacy—and more nuanced protections that reduce harm without cutting off access. The next debate will likely hinge on whether policy focuses on restricting entry or reshaping how platforms operate for young users.