Divergent timelines emerge on youth digital access

European governments are no longer asking only how platforms should protect children online, but also whether children should be allowed on certain platforms at all, write William Fry technology team lawyers Rachel Hayes and Laura Casey.

Age assurance has moved from the margins of online safety policy to its centre.

Three developments in recent weeks capture the shift:

• France has legislated to keep under-15s off social media,
• Britain has set out plans for age-based restrictions and overnight curfews for teenagers, and
• European Commission is now preparing to legislate, shifting from risk management towards restricting access.

For any business offering digital services in Europe, the direction of travel is unmistakable, but the destinations are not yet aligned.

Divergent national timelines and standards are emerging faster than the EU can harmonise them.

This raises an obvious question closer to home: where does all of this leave Ireland, and what stance might it take?

France goes first

France has become the first EU member state to legislate a hard age floor for social media.

The measure, a private member's bill (the proposition tabled by MP Laure Miller to protect minors from the risks of social-media use), establishes a ‘digital majority’ at 15.

What makes this striking is not only its ambition, but also the fact that it breaks with the EU's preferred route of harmonising platform regulation through the Digital Services Act (DSA) and common age-assurance tools, instead opting for a national ban.

On 21 July, the French parliament approved the bill restricting social-media access for under-15s.

The measure passed with substantial support across both chambers, driven by mounting concern over youth mental health, cyberbullying, and excessive screen time.

Since social-media platforms are already regulated under the DSA, which seeks to harmonise online platform regulation across the EU, France had to notify the commission before passing the bill.

In a detailed opinion issued on 6 July, the European Commission welcomed stronger protections for minors and accepted that member states may set minimum age requirements.

However, it warned that parts of the bill – in particular provisions handing enforcement powers to ARCOM, France's audiovisual and digital regulator – encroached on the DSA framework and risked  fragmenting the EU's common rulebook.

Amendments were made before the bill received final parliamentary approval.

Supporters see the measure as a necessary line in the sand.

Critics question whether it can be enforced at all, pointing out that the final text shed key enforcement mechanisms after the EC's review.

Others have flagged the privacy implications of large-scale age verification and whether a blanket ban can be squared with constitutionally protected rights, including privacy and freedom of expression.

President Emmanuel Macron wants the first stage in place for the start of the school year: age checks on new accounts from 1 September 2026, with existing under-15 accounts to be closed from 1 January 2027.

Before any of that takes effect, the bill must still clear a final review by France's Constitutional Council.

Overnight curfews

Britain is charting its own course, with plans to bar certain social-media services from being offered to under-16s from spring 2027.

Modelled on Australia's approach, the regime is expected to target platforms including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, and X.

The first set of regulations is expected to be introduced before parliament by the end of 2026.

The plans, set out by Britain’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, go well beyond a straight ban.

The British government also intends to curb high-risk features, such as livestreaming and contact with strangers, across a wider range of services.

It also intends to add safeguards for 16- and 17-year-olds, including default overnight curfews and switching off autoplay and personalised feeds.

As the details firm up, regulatory attention is likely to turn to whether age-assurance measures actually work.

In its Use of Age Assurance Report 2026, Ofcom, Britain’s communications regulator, raised concerns about some platforms' reliance on age inference systems, warning that they may miss significant numbers of child users and stressing the need for robust age assurance.

The British government has echoed this, confirming that stronger age-assurance requirements will underpin the new regime and asking Ofcom to define what counts as effective age assurance for confirming whether a user is over 16.

Ofcom is due to deliver that assessment to parliament in October, and it is expected to shape the debate on the under-16 rules. 

Risk management to restriction

To date, the EU has leaned on platform accountability, risk mitigation, and transparency under the DSA, rather than outright bans.

Article 28 of the DSA requires platforms accessible to minors to safeguard children's safety, privacy, and security, and the commission is developing both an EU age-verification solution and a broader age-assurance framework.

However, the mood is shifting decisively.

On 13 July, the Special Panel on Child Safety Online published its report, recommending a harmonised EU-wide minimum age of 13 for social media.

The same day, commission president Ursula von der Leyen said that the body would review the panel's recommendations before presenting legislative proposals after the summer.

That takes the debate beyond how platforms manage risk and towards the question France has already answered for itself: whether access should be withheld until children reach a set age and, if so, what that age should be.

Coupled with the EC's work on stronger age-verification tools and the prospect of an EU-wide "digital age of majority", the direction of travel at the EU level is now unmistakable.

Ireland’s position

For now, Ireland has resisted the temptation to legislate a ban of its own.

It relies instead on the DSA and Coimisiún na Meán's Online Safety Code, which, since July 2025, has required Ireland-based video-sharing platforms to use age assurance to keep children away from pornography and gratuitous violence, treating self-declaration alone as ineffective.

That posture is set out most clearly in the National Digital & AI Strategy (February 2026), which we considered previously.

The strategy gives the clearest signal yet of Ireland's thinking: any minimum age, or digital age of majority, should ideally be set at EU level in cooperation with other member states, though the strategy leaves the door open for Ireland to act domestically if it judges that necessary.

The preference for an EU-level solution is deliberate.

Since online platforms already fall under the DSA's common framework, a purely national ban risks cutting across it, as France's exchange with the commission illustrates.

In the meantime, Ireland is quietly building the infrastructure that future age-verification measures will need, including a national Digital Wallet aligned with the European Digital Identity (EUDI) framework.

Its precise role is still to be defined, but it could let users present verified proof of age securely and in a privacy-preserving way.

Legal teams must keep pace

For legal, compliance, and trust and safety teams, the immediate task is to keep pace.

Age-assurance standards, implementation timelines, and regulatory expectations now differ from one jurisdiction to the next.

Horizon-scanning and early engagement with regulators will only grow in importance as national approaches develop alongside EU-level initiatives.

Sustained scrutiny

More broadly, any organisation whose services are accessible to minors should expect sustained scrutiny of its child-safety governance, age-assurance processes, and wider compliance arrangements.

The question is no longer only how platforms protect children online, but increasingly whether children should reach certain services at all.

For digital businesses, age assurance is fast becoming a regulatory expectation rather than a design choice, and the time to prepare is now.

• William Simon-Fellowes and Anny Svinti of William Fry also contributed to this article.