Greece’s Under-15 Social-Media Ban Starts in 2027
Matthew Leo · Published October 31, 2026 · News
Greece has moved its under-15 social-media ban from a government proposal into law.
Parliament approved the measure on October 22, setting a January 1, 2027 start date. Platforms will be responsible for keeping younger children off covered services and for rechecking users’ ages.
The law’s hardest problem is not stating an age. It is proving that age without turning every account into a collection point for identity documents or biometric data.
What the Greek law changes
The Greek government’s official explanation places responsibility on social-media providers rather than parents or children. It identifies services such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok as examples of the platforms covered.
The minimum age is 15. Providers have a short implementation period before the rule takes effect, but Greece is not prescribing one exclusive method of verification.
That flexibility may help platforms use different technical approaches. It also makes regulatory oversight important. A weak age check can be bypassed. An intrusive one can expose sensitive information about millions of adults and children.
Age assurance is the central test
A platform can estimate or verify age in several ways:
- an account holder can provide a birth date;
- a parent or guardian can confirm a child’s age;
- a trusted third party can confirm that a user is above a threshold without giving the platform a full identity;
- a service can estimate age from behaviour, an image or other signals;
- a government credential can provide an age attribute.
Each option has trade-offs. Self-declaration is easy to evade. Identity documents can reveal more information than necessary. Facial age estimation can be inaccurate and raises biometric concerns. Behavioural estimation can expand profiling.
The privacy-preserving goal is data minimization: confirm whether someone meets the age threshold while collecting as little additional information as possible.
A national ban still relies on platforms
Greece is one of several countries seeking a wider European solution. National law can impose duties and penalties, but social networks operate across borders and share account systems across many countries.
Platforms must also decide what happens when an age check is uncertain, an account is shared or a child appeals a mistake. Enforcement is therefore about more than deleting accounts on January 1. Regulators will need to examine verification accuracy, data retention, appeals and whether companies redirect younger users into similar features outside the law’s definition.
Reuters reports that France’s comparable measure was struck down by its Constitutional Council in August. That history shows why the legal design and proportionality of restrictions matter as much as the policy announcement.
Canada is taking a different route
Canada has not enacted a blanket national social-media ban for children under 15. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner instead released a Children’s Privacy Code that explains how existing privacy law should apply to services likely to be accessed by young people.
As Mapletechie explained in Canada’s Children’s Privacy Code Changes App Design, the Canadian approach emphasizes appropriate defaults, understandable consent, limits on profiling and protection against deceptive design.
The two approaches overlap but are not interchangeable. Greece starts with access: younger children should not have accounts. Canada’s code starts with the design and data practices of services children may use.
What Canadian families should take from it
The Greek law does not change which services are legal in Canada. It may still affect Canadian users indirectly if global platforms redesign age checks or account controls for several markets at once.
Parents should be cautious about unofficial verification messages. A new law in another country is an easy pretext for phishing. Age checks should occur through the platform’s official app or website, not through an unexpected link asking for a passport, payment card or face scan.
Families can also review birth dates, recovery contacts, privacy settings and linked accounts before new verification rules arrive. Those checks will not solve every safety problem, but they reduce the chance that a rushed platform rollout locks the wrong person out or sends sensitive information to an impostor.
Greece has now settled the political question of whether to impose an age threshold. The more revealing phase begins next: whether platforms can enforce it accurately, let users challenge mistakes and prove age without building a larger store of sensitive identity data.
Tags: children, privacy, social media, Digital Policy