Greece has decided that children under the age of fifteen will no longer be allowed on social media, after its parliament approved a new law on Friday following a long and heated debate that ran late into the night. The move puts Greece among a growing group of countries that are trying to draw a legal line around how young people use the apps that now fill so much of their daily lives.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis first floated the idea back in April, when he took to TikTok itself to describe the restriction as difficult but necessary. When the bill finally came to a vote, his conservative New Democracy party used its parliamentary majority to carry it through, but no other party voted in favour. The opposition socialist party PASOK chose to abstain, having pushed for a softer version of the law that would have set the cut-off at thirteen and added parental controls for thirteen and fourteen year olds, while parties on the left and the nationalist right voted against the measure altogether.
Under the new law, which comes into force on 1 January 2027, social networks will have to check the ages of their users, and companies that fail to do so will face heavy penalties. The government has given the platforms around two and a half months to put working age checks in place while also protecting the privacy of their users. Officials say the aim is to stand beside parents in tackling what they call endless scrolling, which they argue eats into children’s sleep, weakens their concentration and leaves them less time with their friends.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Greece is far from alone in taking this step. Australia became the first country to bring in such a ban last year, barring under-sixteens from social media, and more than twenty countries have now passed similar laws according to a tally by the AFP news agency. Critics of the platforms argue that their algorithms are designed to hold young users’ attention for as long as possible, and they warn that hours of scrolling can damage children’s mental health. At the same time, free speech campaigners have pushed back against the bans, and sceptics question whether age checks can ever really work in practice, given how easily determined teenagers find their way around them.
The coming months will show whether Greece can succeed where others have struggled. The government is working with six other European Union countries and the European Commission on a shared age verification system, and the way the platforms respond in the next ten weeks will decide whether the law becomes a genuine shield for children or simply another rule that young users learn to dodge.
