France fails to ban kids from social media: Age assurance remains privacy's "hard problem"

France’s Constitutional Council has struck down the central provision of a new law that would have banned under-15s from accessing social media.

In this episode, Robert Bateman looks at why the Council found the measure disproportionate, focusing on two fundamental rights: freedom of expression and the right to private life.

The decision also highlights a longstanding problem with age assurance: to identify children online, platforms may need to establish the age of everyone else too.

Topics covered include:

• France’s proposed under-15 social media ban
• The Constitutional Council’s decision of 14 August 2026
• Freedom of expression and access to online services
• The privacy implications of universal age assurance
• Why this was a constitutional ruling, rather than a GDPR judgment
• The difficulty of balancing children’s safety against privacy
• Whether privacy and child protection sometimes involve a genuine trade-off