Greece to Ban Social Media for Children Under 15

Per a Reuters report, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis unveiled plans on Wednesday, April 8 to enforce age-based restrictions on social media access, with the new national policy set to take effect across Greece on January 1, 2027.

In a public video address directed straight at Greece’s young population, the prime minister outlined a host of well-documented harms tied to unregulated early social media use that shaped the new proposal. These include widespread sleep disruptions, rising youth anxiety rates, and the intentionally addictive design frameworks that most major social platforms are built around. Mitsotakis also called out additional damaging patterns common among underage users: children’s brains never getting the chance to fully disconnect and rest, constant unhealthy social comparison to peers, and the excessive hours many young people spend mindlessly scrolling through content on their smartphones.

Shortly after making the public announcement, Mitsotakis sent a formal letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, according to Greek domestic news organization Oema. In the correspondence, the prime minister laid out full details of Greece’s domestic plans, and urged EU leaders to agree on a unified European regulatory framework for youth social media access by the end of the year.

Mitsotakis’ proposal calls for three key cross-European measures: a standardized universal age-verification system for all social media users, mandatory repeated re-verification of user age every six months, and the formal establishment of a European "digital age of majority" set at 15 years old. This 15-year threshold would become the legal minimum age for any person to access social media across the bloc.

With this policy moving forward, Greece joins 10 other countries around the world that have already taken formal steps to restrict minor access to social media, and a growing number of additional nations are currently weighing similar protective regulatory measures.