Greece has become the first country in the European Union to pass a law that will cut children under 15 off social media entirely. After a marathon debate that stretched from Thursday into Friday, the Hellenic Parliament approved the bill on October 23, 2026 — a move trending per news coverage across Reuters, Engadget, TechRadar, and dozens of outlets worldwide.
The law takes effect on January 1, 2027. From that date, no one under 15 will be allowed to hold a social media account in Greece — and unlike softer proposals floated elsewhere, there is no parental-consent loophole and no grandfather clause for accounts that already exist. Social platforms operating in the country have roughly two and a half months to build age-verification systems that can reliably tell a 14-year-old from a 15-year-old, or face fines of up to 6% of their global annual turnover under the EU's Digital Services Act.
What the law actually says
The legislation is formally titled "Prohibition of the use of online social networking services by minors under 15." The wording matters: it applies specifically to social networking services — platforms named in coverage include Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Snapchat — but not to private messaging or educational use. Teenagers will still be able to text friends and family on messaging apps, and schools' digital tools are untouched.
The duty to enforce falls on the platforms, not on parents. The law requires services to apply age-verification methods that are, in the bill's language, "appropriate, proportionate, and reliable" — checks that use robust and accurate techniques, work under real-life conditions, and include safeguards against circumvention.
For the tricky question of how a platform proves a user's age without demanding passports from teenagers, Greece is leaning on its own digital infrastructure. A government-backed mobile app called Kids Wallet (alongside the Gov.gr app) lets parents scan a QR code when a platform cannot reliably establish age. The app generates a privacy-focused token that answers only one question — is this person over or under 15? — without disclosing birthdays, names, or other personal data. Digital Governance and AI Minister Dimitris Papastergiou has stressed that the design minimizes the data platforms can collect while keeping the check reliable.
The age math is strict and simple. Authorities will use January 1 as the reference birth date for each year, aligned with school grades — which means that from January 1, 2027, anyone born in 2013 or later will be locked out of social media in Greece.
A 16-hour debate and a divided chamber
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the plan back in April — fittingly, on TikTok, one of the platforms most popular with young Greeks — and called the measure "difficult but necessary." When the vote finally came, only his governing New Democracy party, which holds 158 of the 300 parliamentary seats, voted in favor.
The opposition split. The socialist PASOK party abstained, having pushed an alternative bill that would have banned social media only for under-13s while adding parental controls for 13- and 14-year-olds. SYRIZA, Greek Solution, KKE, Niki, and Course of Freedom all voted against. Reporting from Kathimerini described an intense sixteen-hour debate in which the government argued that waiting for a perfect Europe-wide solution would take far too long.
The government's rhetoric has centered on children themselves. Mitsotakis said social media platforms have two and a half months to devise age verification that also protects privacy. His government says it is "standing by parents" to curb the "endless scrolling" that deprives children of sleep, concentration, and time with friends. Minister of State Akis Skertsos framed the philosophy bluntly: the country should move "from the personal responsibility of parents and children, to corporate responsibility and state regulation."
It is not Greece's first move in this direction. The country barred mobile phones in schools back in 2024, and opinion polls show the new social media ban is widely supported by the adult population.
The enforcement machine: Kids Wallet, EETT, and the DSA
Greece's answer to the hardest part of any age ban — who checks, and how — is a three-layer system. Day-to-day oversight sits with the EU's existing Digital Services Act mechanism and Greece's National Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT), which acts as the country's Digital Services Coordinator. The broadcasting council and the Hellenic Data Protection Authority will also police compliance.
The real teeth are the fines. Under the DSA, penalties for noncompliance can reach 6% of a platform's global annual turnover — the kind of figure that gets the attention of even the largest tech companies. For engineering teams at Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, the clock is now running on a compliance deadline shorter than most product roadmaps.
Greece is not working alone. It is among seven European Union countries collaborating with the European Commission on an age-verification solution, and its Kids Wallet token system is designed to answer the constitutional objection that killed France's comparable attempt: in August, France's Constitutional Council struck down a similar ban after ruling that requiring every adult to identify themselves to access a legal service violated freedom of expression. Greece's model — where the platform asks a government token a yes-or-no question rather than collecting identity documents — is meant to survive exactly that challenge.
Part of a global wave
Athens joins a fast-growing list of governments drawing an age line on social media. Australia became the first country to pass such legislation in 2025, barring under-16s from social platforms — and it is already moving to enforce it: Australia is preparing to sue Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms over alleged violations of its under-16 ban, a warning shot that shows what enforcement looks like in practice.
More than 20 countries have passed similar laws, according to an AFP tally. India's Supreme Court has also weighed in on the children's-internet question from the other direction — ruling that children have a fundamental right to internet access — highlighting how differently democracies are balancing protection and rights online.
Each country's design differs, and that is the point. Australia chose 16; Greece chose 15 with no parental-consent escape hatch; France's attempt died in court. The Greek experiment will be watched closely because it is the first to combine a hard age floor, retroactive account locks, platform-side responsibility, and a government-issued privacy token inside the EU's regulatory machinery.
The critics: privacy, VPNs, and whether bans work at all
Not everyone is convinced. Digital rights groups warn that mandatory age checks across platforms could quietly erode online privacy for everyone, not just teenagers — a system that verifies every user inevitably touches every user. Free-speech advocates have opposed such bans on principle, and technical sceptics point to the obvious workarounds: VPNs, borrowed accounts, fake birth dates, and the anonymity that has always made the internet hard to card at the door.
The French court defeat also hangs over the law. Constitutional lawyers will be watching whether Greece's token-based design actually avoids the privacy and expression concerns that doomed its neighbor's version — or whether it simply moves the identification step into a government app.
There is also the empirical question: do age bans change children's wellbeing, or do they just push them to less visible corners of the internet? Australia's enforcement push and Greece's rollout will provide the first large-scale test cases the world has ever had.
What happens next
The immediate timeline is tight. Publication in the Government Gazette formalizes the law, EETT must issue practical guidance to platforms, and companies have until January 1 to stand up verification that satisfies the "reliable" standard. On New Year's Day 2027, the real test begins: existing accounts held by under-15s get locked, the Kids Wallet QR flow goes live at scale, and regulators start watching for the first platform that fails the check.
For parents in Greece, the change is concrete — state-backed tools to pair a child's device with an age gate, backed by the force of law. For the rest of the world, it is a live experiment in one of the internet's most contested questions: whether governments can, and should, decide the age at which a child is allowed to scroll.
Sources: Reuters; Engadget; TechRadar; Kathimerini via ANA-MPA; AFP; EuroNews; Skimwire; Android Headlines; Particle News.