Every day, hundreds of millions of children log on to platforms never designed for them. They encounter unsolicited contact from adults, exposure to violent or sexualised content, cyberbullying, sexual exploitation or recruitment into criminal networks.
Yet recent research reveals a deeper danger: social media has become a major global public health issue. The French National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety released a report in December 2025, following an analysis of more than a thousand scientific studies, that concluded that the use of social media has proven negative effects on adolescents’ health. For instance, it notes that the risk of self-harm increases with two hours of daily social media use among girls. Fourteen-year-old girls spending five hours a day on social media are three times more likely to self-harm than those not exposed. Among the generation born between 1990 and 2012, excessive social media use during adolescence is associated with 590,000 additional cases of depression over the course of a lifetime and 799 additional deaths by suicide. Limiting use reduces lifetime depression prevalence by 12% to 14.7%.These are not opinions: this is public health data, scientifically proven, and the cumulative evidence obligates public authorities to act.From evidence to regulationSetting a minimum digital age of access is a critical first step towards creating space genuinely adapted to each stage of life. This is not about punishing children, but about shifting responsibility from parents and children to platforms, which already set a minimum age of 13 yet fail to enforce it.No one denies that these addictive features carry risks for adults too. But the stakes are categorically higher for minors, whose cognitive and emotional regulation systems are still under construction. Recommendation engines, infinite scroll and social reward mechanisms are engineered to exploit exactly the vulnerabilities that adolescence produces: heightened sensitivity to peer comparison, incomplete impulse control and a developing prefrontal cortex. This is not incidental. This is the predictable output of a business model built to hold attention at any cost.We have seen this pattern before, with tobacco and alcohol. Age restrictions on those products faced fierce industry lobbying, framed as personal freedom and the promise of responsible use. Today it seems self-evident that minors should not buy cigarettes, but a generation ago that consensus did not exist. France’s own restriction on tobacco sales to minors took decades to reach its current form.Crucially, age restrictions on these products were never a substitute for prevention and education; they were paired with them. There is no choice to be made between regulating addictive algorithms, improving digital literacy and requiring platforms to verify users’ age. All are necessary and none alone suffices.This is why France advocates the need to restrict access to social media for children under 15, both under its national law and at the European level, and to step up the fight against risky features. Once again, these approaches should not be seen as mutually exclusive, as they are complementary and, on the contrary, aim to strengthen the protection of minors online in order to guarantee them access to social media spaces that are age-appropriate and free from features that pose a risk to their health and safety.The shift towards age restrictionsA global movement towards a ‘digital age of majority’ is now underway. Within the European Union, 15 member states are pursuing similar legislation. Australia has already restricted access for children under 16. In the United States, courts are drawing their own conclusions: juries and settlements in 2026 have held major platforms liable for designing addictive products that damage adolescent mental health, resulting in billions of dollars in commitments and concrete changes to platform defaults for teenage users.Under France’s 2026 G7 presidency, digital ministers have adopted a shared set of principles recognising that certain platform features are addictive and harmful to minors, and committing G7 members to age assurance, safety-by-design defaults and closer cooperation with the scientific community.Children deserve virtual spaces tailored to them, not to be left to fend for themselves in spaces that will exploit their specific characteristics. Innovations must incorporate children’s essential needs and vulnerabilities from the very beginning of the design process.Social media is not the only concern: generative artificial intelligence tools and all online platforms must change, because children must grow up without being treated as products.
