French President Emmanuel Macron has said he will ban social media for children under 15 in France “in the coming months” if no progress is made at the European Union level.
“We cannot wait,” Macron said, speaking on France 2 TV after a murder in Nogent, where a 14-year-old teenager stabbed his teacher to death during a backpack check.
The French president also announced that age verification would soon be introduced on websites selling knives online.
“A 15-year-old teenager will no longer be able to buy a knife online. This means that we are going to introduce large-scale financial sanctions and bans,” he promised.
Later, on social media, Emmanuel Macron wrote: “I am banning social media for children under 15. Platforms have the means to verify age. Let’s do it.”
Earlier, the ministers for digital policy of France, Spain and Greece developed a bill which proposed to close access to resources for users under the age of 15. Commenting on this topic, Emmanuel Macron said that social media can cause mental disorders in children and that this “has been proven.”
On June 10, in the French town of Nogent, Haute-Marne, a 14-year-old schoolboy attacked a 31-year-old teaching assistant with a knife and fatally wounded him. The incident occurred at the school gates during a morning backpack search. The teenager has been detained, and the police are questioning him and investigating the circumstances of the incident.
President Macron also announced that France will introduce age verification on websites selling knives online, similar to the measures currently in place for pornographic websites.
