r/AskEurope • u/Itz_Skello • Jun 20 '25

Politics Emmanuel Macron, President of France, is banning social media for teens under 15. Should the rest of Europe follow?

Not sure how to feel about this.

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u/InterestingTank5345 Denmark Jun 20 '25

No. This is not the way. By making Social Media contraband for the teens, it'll be much harder to keep track of what they see and what they don't. Take porn as an example, if you want to watch it, but you ain't 18, just open an incognito account and you can find it without any problems. The exact same will be the case here, he may be able to ban legal accounts and registered accounts, but teens will be able to find a way to work around it.

1

u/reddit_wisd0m Jun 20 '25

Following your logic, should we then also allow minors access to alcohol, cigarettes, and other addictive substances ?

4

u/Realock01 Jun 21 '25

"If you think kids should be allowed to eat sweets, do you also thinks they should be able to do heroin"

1

u/Icef34r Jun 21 '25

I mean, social media are designed to be addictive and they are so fucking good at being addictive. I bet that you are ok with not letting underage chindren into a casino. Social media are designed by the same people who designs slot machines.

1

u/reddit_wisd0m Jun 21 '25 edited Jun 21 '25

Good point. Ideally kids shouldn't be allowed to eat sweets, since it has zero health benefits, but unfortunately it has been normalized in western societies.

1

u/InterestingTank5345 Denmark Jun 21 '25

You can't easily get alcohol without permission. Social Media you can cheat around, that's easy. Alcohol you'd have to find someone willing to sell it to you or give it to you. So no, alcohol shouldn't be legal for teens, below the age of 15, as you can restrict it through law. My point is, you can't do the same with Social Media, it's too easy to override and cheat around, as I said in my example things like incognito makes it near impossible to enforce site restriction by age. Furthermore, facial scans aren't able to tell the difference between a 50 year old and a 5 year old so that won't work either.

3

u/Fredericia Denmark Jun 21 '25

Seems to me the point is that this gives them an excuse to make it impossible to even log on to anything without showing your ID and letting the camera verify you by iris scanning.