France bans social media for <15 year olds

[digdeeper]

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/21/world/fr ... r-children

The justification:

“The brains of our children and our teenagers are not for sale,” he had said in a video message in January. “The emotions of our children and our teenagers are not for sale or to be manipulated, neither by American platforms nor by Chinese algorithms.”

They are already manipulated by the school you so worship, even worse than any social media algo can muster. It's 7 hours of sitting, writing down stuff you will never use, getting screamed at by teachers, having to fight off bullies, wear what you hate, and follow 150 other arbitrary rules.

According to Arcom, children aged 12 to 17 in France spend an average of 1 hour and 21 minutes a day on TikTok. The regulator says the platform’s recommendation algorithm tends to promote the most “extreme” content, exposing teenagers to a continuous stream of anxiety-inducing or otherwise harmful videos.

Sounds little compared to the 7h at school. The "continuous stream of anxiety" actually comes from school, worrying that you haven't prepared for tests well enough, or you will be bullied again, etc.

The truth is this has nothing to do with "protecting kids" and will in fact hurt everyone that is disabled in a way that inhibits leaving the house or gets him mocked by his peers. It will hurt any autist or similar person who is disliked because of it. It will hurt anyone whose parents don't let him leave the house. It will hurt anyone with specific interests that are hard to fulfill outside. It will hurt information access for anyone who has specific problems and a lack of "trusted adults" IRL who can help. It will even hurt completely regular people by inhibiting communication with their friends, setting up events, etc. And they have to know all this because psychologists have already raised the alarm when Denmark or Australia attempted this. Therefore, the hurt is the point. The fact that basically every "nation" is jumping onto this train also signifies a conspiracy, probably to prevent young people from defining themselves so that they can be chained easier later.

[TechLord]

Why am I not surprised?

Well, at least one year less than Australia (16).

Notice the pattern: one [s]country[/s] government does something that takes freedom away, many others follow.

This "protection" stuff prevents people from being confronted with reality. It just delays the inevitable. It probably exists to "domesticate" citizens. To prevent them from developing independent thinking.

Also, the goal of this is obviously age verification surveillance.

Quote that can be applied to other areas of life:

If we were put there for our protection, why were the guns at the guard towers pointed inward, instead of outward?

(source)

From what I remember, France was also the first EU country that banned students from using mobile phones in schools back in 2018.

Every now and then, I hear politicians or mainstream media people saying phrases along the lines of "the law hasn't caught up yet with the modern pace of technology". Well, good! So be it! It shouldn't catch up. Bureaucrats should stay behind their castle walls and leave us alone.

[glp]

(((I really can't imagine who's behind all these security concerns)))

[mocheryl]

I loathe social media, but this is just nuts and another nail in freedom’s coffin.

I keep reading on news sites how this law has “major public approval”. Really? Have people really become this much of a cattle that they can’t see how insane this law is? They really do just blindly believe into anything that’s labeled as “for the children”. This isn’t like banning alcohol and tobacco for minors. Instead it’s going to hurt everyone because now everyone will have to go through violating practices to use the Internet.

I see far more sinister motives here, though. The logging and tracking of your Internet activity is obviously going to be exploited. Government could as well build a profile of citizens they should be “concerned” about based on the websites you browse.

Then there is also the source of information one chooses. Our rulers realized there are more and more people who go for alternatives instead of solely listening to what the state-approved media has to say. After all you can’t risk your population having “wrong” thoughts now can you? Especially children. Their minds just might become accustomed at a young age to radical concepts like freedom of speech.

This is also a slippery slope. One country did it, so now other countries see it as fair game and thus start doing it themselves as someone in this thread has already noted. And who’s to say it will end with social media? They already have the mechanism in place. Why not expand it to other areas? They can just block unauthorized access on ISP level due to … erm … security and terrorism and such. They tried to do something similar when they had the intention of turning Covid vax passes in all vax passes, so why not the same for Internet?

There’s a chance that children who are impacted by this law and eventually reach the voting age will vote against politicians who dictate these fascist policies, but I’m afraid it will already be too late by then.

[molly]

one [s]country[/s] government does something that takes freedom away, many others follow.

aka one government finds a profit in it for the bureaucrats, the others try to cash in also.

None of these creatures give a shit about other peoples children.

I keep reading on news sites how this law has “major public approval”. Really? Have people really become this much of a cattle that they can’t see how insane this law is? They really do just blindly believe into anything that’s labeled as “for the children”.

First the news it's self today is looking for headlines to sell shit to the masses, whether its truth lies or something in between. Secondly statistics them selves are often manipulated to help the agenda of those who pay for the study, there was a good documentary on how statistics are just bullshit, I seen a long time ago, but I forget the name.

There’s a chance that children who are impacted by this law and eventually reach the voting age will vote against politicians who dictate these fascist policies

Yes this will not last forever and hopefully the next generation will have more fight. Government hate has been erupting through out the world, but the west is slow and lazy.

but I’m afraid it will already be too late by then.

Yep, the scum will have already made their money by then and they don't care about the mess they leave behind or who has to clean it up.
The people who are committing these crimes against the people need consequences brought against them. Currently they are not held accountable for anything they do.

[vulonkaaz]

I wonder what the actual repercussions will be for me

if you're wondering what the actual situation is in the country right now : it's actually pretty great in terms of net neutrality, blocked websites are only blocked at DNS level and only at the main corporate ISPs (I use a based local ISP so I don't have this problem), I can torrent all day long and not be bothered (people at big ISPs can receive letters if they're caught torrenting and get fined if they're caught again)

the only problem right now is its hard to access porn anymore, all the biggest websites have age verification thus aren't accessible anymore I can only use reddit and 4chan and obscure sites now

I expect to maybe get blocked out of Discord (this will be a good thing if all the people i know irl get blocked out too and finally migrate somewhere else) and get blocked out of Instagram and twittr (not like I actually use those anymore nor have any reason to check those)

[digdeeper]

I wonder what the actual repercussions will be for me

if you're wondering what the actual situation is in the country right now : it's actually pretty great in terms of net neutrality, blocked websites are only blocked at DNS level and only at the main corporate ISPs (I use a based local ISP so I don't have this problem), I can torrent all day long and not be bothered (people at big ISPs can receive letters if they're caught torrenting and get fined if they're caught again)

the only problem right now is its hard to access porn anymore, all the biggest websites have age verification thus aren't accessible anymore I can only use reddit and 4chan and obscure sites now

I expect to maybe get blocked out of Discord (this will be a good thing if all the people i know irl get blocked out too and finally migrate somewhere else) and get blocked out of Instagram and twittr (not like I actually use those anymore nor have any reason to check those)

I see you're French. Well, keep us updated if you can.

[mocheryl]

There’s a chance that children who are impacted by this law and eventually reach the voting age will vote against politicians who dictate these fascist policies

Yes this will not last forever and hopefully the next generation will have more fight. Government hate has been erupting through out the world, but the west is slow and lazy.

After rereading my final paragraph I realized that I was a bit naive. I doubt voting is going to change much as the current form of democracy is a scam. It would be better to just bypass the laws like we did during Covid (held social events in secrecy, counterfeit vax passes and stuff like that). Maybe moving as much as we can to hidden networks and deploying hardware and software to countries where they don’t care much about Internet traffic. It could only just delay the inevitable, but if we do it in large numbers, hopefully the elites will realize their endeavor is in vain and will drop the whole thing. That’s what happened to prohibition due to bootlegging, so it might also be effective in this case.

but I’m afraid it will already be too late by then.

Yep, the scum will have already made their money by then and they don't care about the mess they leave behind or who has to clean it up.
The people who are committing these crimes against the people need consequences brought against them. Currently they are not held accountable for anything they do.

I don’t think is (just) money, but an actual conspiracy. Complete control of the Internet like they have for television and printed press. There are already talks right now how they’re going to expand the system to other platform. Gaming and chatting for now. Then what? E-mail? Forums? Blogs and news sites (some allow posting comments on articles so they’re likely candidates for this)? And let’s not kid ourself that anyone is going to answer for these crimes if it ever comes to that. I was watching this classical rom-com that involves politics the other night and one of the characters satirically states something along the lines of "The higher [in position/power] you are, the more mistakes you can afford. The number and kind of mistakes you make define your style". If only they knew (or maybe they did).

[…] blocked websites are only blocked at DNS level and only at the main corporate ISPs […]

Hooking up your (router’s) resolver to DNSCrypt should solve that. Plus, it encrypts and anonymizes your DNS traffic. What’s the status on VPNs? I think the UK banned them just because people were using them to evade the aforementioned blockades. Is it still allowed to do that in baguette land?

[vulonkaaz]

What’s the status on VPNs? I think the UK banned them just because people were using them to evade the aforementioned blockades. Is it still allowed to do that in baguette land?

i don't know of any VPN ban (but i also don't watch the news), i got free tier of Proton VPN on one of my browsers and I have no problem using it