Phoenix 24
The measure would make Greece one of Europe’s most assertive governments in limiting minors’ exposure to algorithm-driven platforms.
Athens, Greece
Greece has formally introduced legislation that would prohibit children under the age of 15 from using social media, moving the country closer to one of the most restrictive digital-protection regimes for minors in Europe.
The bill was submitted to the Greek Parliament and is scheduled for examination by the relevant parliamentary committee on October 13. It establishes 15 as the minimum age for accessing online social-networking services and places enforcement responsibilities on national broadcasting and data-protection authorities.
The government argues that the measure is preventive rather than punitive. Its stated objective is to reduce risks associated with early exposure to platforms designed around personalized recommendations, endless content feeds and other mechanisms intended to maximize user attention.
Greek authorities have specifically cited concerns about mental health, problematic usage patterns, psychosocial development and online safety. The legislation reflects a broader European shift away from treating children’s social-media use primarily as a matter of parental discretion and toward treating platform design itself as a regulatory issue.
Age verification will be central to implementation. Greece plans to rely in part on existing digital tools such as Gov.gr Wallet and KidsWallet, while also allowing equivalent solutions that comply with European Union law. The challenge will be to verify age effectively without creating unnecessary surveillance or compromising the privacy of minors.
Greece is not acting in isolation. France, Denmark and several other European countries have moved toward tighter age restrictions, while the European Union is developing its own framework aimed at creating common protections for children across social media, video platforms, gaming services and AI-based applications.
The debate is increasingly focused not only on whether children should have accounts, but on how digital platforms are engineered. Infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications, algorithmic recommendations and targeted engagement systems are receiving growing scrutiny because they can intensify compulsive use.
Critics of blanket age restrictions, however, warn that prohibitions can be difficult to enforce and may push younger users toward less regulated online spaces. They also argue that requiring identity or age verification can introduce new privacy risks if implementation is poorly designed.
That tension will define the next stage of European digital policy. Governments want to reduce exposure to harmful content and addictive design without building systems that monitor children more aggressively than the platforms themselves already do.
Greece’s legislation therefore represents more than a national social-media ban. It is part of a larger European experiment in determining where parental responsibility ends and platform responsibility begins.
The next battle over children’s digital lives may not be about whether they can go online, but about who controls the architecture they enter once they do.