PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday vowed to speed up the legislative process for a social media ban on under-15s, with the goal of enacting it in September this year. "I have asked the government to activate the accelerated procedure so it can go as quickly as possible," he said in a self-recorded video broadcast on BFM Television. He said he wanted it to be "applied from the start of the next school year", in September.
French lawmakers have been debating the bill for such a ban, following in the footsteps of Australia, which last month became the first country to prohibit children under the age of 16 using such popular — and addictive — platforms as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Their draft legislation is to be submitted to the French parliament on Monday. Macron said that, on top of a ban on children under 15 accessing social media, he also backed a ban on students having on mobile phones in schools. "The brains of our children and our adolescents are not for sale or for manipulating, not by US platforms, not by Chinese algorithms," the president said. — AFP
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