JAKARTA - The French National Assembly on Monday, January 26 local time, has approved a bill that prohibits children under the age of 15 from using social media.
French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to speed up the legislative process for the bill, with the aim of imposing it in September this year.
"I have asked the government to activate the acceleration procedure so that the process can run as quickly as possible," Macron was quoted as saying by Le Monde.
Through this bill, Macron is pushing France to follow in the footsteps of Australia, which was the first country to impose a ban on users under 16 years of age from accessing social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.
Macron believes that social media is one of the factors causing violence among young people. He wants the ban to be in place before the start of the new school year in September.
The ban in France will require platforms to block access for young teenagers through an age verification mechanism that complies with EU law.
"With this law, we set a clear limit in society and declare that social media is not without danger," said centrist lawmaker Laure Miller.
In addition to banning access to social media for children under the age of 15, he had previously supported a ban on the use of mobile phones in schools for students.
"The brains of our children and adolescents are not for sale or manipulation, not by US platforms, not by Chinese algorithms," Macron said.
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