France Tables Bill to Bar Under-15s from Social Media Starting Sept 2026

States have periodically stepped in when new technologies collide with childhood—from Britain’s 1833 Factory Act limiting child mill workers, to the U.S. 1998 COPPA law on kids’ data, to Australia’s 2025 under-16 social-media ban that Paris now copies. France’s move fits a century-long arc of shifting power from parents or industry self-regulation toward formal state rules on youth welfare. Yet the EU’s Digital Services Act already blocked France’s 2023 “digital legal age,” so this reprise tests whether national child-protection claims can override single-market rules—much as 1960s European TV-ad bans on tobacco eventually harmonised into EU-wide standards. If France succeeds, it could seed an EU-level template; if it stalls, it will underscore the limits of unilateral tech governance in a borderless internet. On a 100-year horizon the episode marks another step in the gradual normalisation of age-gating online spaces—analogous to the 1970s seat-belt mandates: initially controversial, later routine—but its lasting impact will hinge on enforcement tech and whether under-age users simply migrate to encrypted or offshore platforms, repeating the historical cat-and-mouse pattern between regulators and youth culture.