From 1 September, French children under the age of 15 can no longer open a social media account, and by January 2027 every existing French account will have to prove its holder is over fifteen. Australia introduced a version of the same law at sixteen in December 2025, and the research since then shows the kids did not leave the platforms. They re-declared their age, which means the audience stopped being visible rather than stopped being there. For brands running creator campaigns in France, that makes independently verified audience data the practical issue, and the age breakdown behind any creator’s following can already be checked today, before the first deadline lands.
What the Law Actually Says
On 21 July the French parliament voted to ban social media for anyone under fifteen, making France the first country in the European Union to do so. The prohibition is a single sentence added to France’s 2004 digital economy law: under-15s may not access an online social network.
The rollout comes in two stages. From 1 September, platforms must check the age of anyone opening a new account and turn away those under fifteen. From 1 January 2027 the obligation reaches backwards into accounts that already exist, which means every French user will eventually have to prove their age rather than simply declare it. Online encyclopaedias and educational services are exempt, and neither children nor their parents face any penalty, so enforcement falls entirely on the platforms.
How that enforcement should work is still undefined. The technical standard platforms are meant to follow has not been published, the implementing decree is unfinished, and the Conseil constitutionnel has yet to review the text. Macron has called the vote a landmark for protecting children, the European Commission has welcomed it, and Spain, Denmark and Greece are drafting versions of their own. European commentary is divided between those who see a legal line parents can finally hold and those who expect the problem to be postponed rather than solved.
Where the Kids Went in Australia
Australia’s version has been running since 10 December 2025, at sixteen rather than fifteen, with a named regulator, monthly reporting and fines of up to A$49.5 million. It is the closest available forecast for France.
The opening figures looked decisive, with platforms removing close to five million under-16 accounts in the first few weeks. The research that followed tells a different story. A University of Newcastle team tracked 408 adolescents before the law took effect and again three months later and found more than 85% of under-16s still using the restricted platforms, mostly through second accounts or private browsing. Australia’s regulator reached a similar conclusion, opening compliance investigations into Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube in March after finding that a large share of children who held accounts before the ban still held them afterwards.
The same study contains the finding that answers the question directly. Daily social media use among 14 and 15-year-olds fell from 78% to 69%, a real but modest drop. Among over-16s it rose from 80% to 89% across the same three months, with nothing new arriving for that group to explain the increase. The kids did not go to another platform or offline. They moved up an age bracket in the data.
What Changes Is the Data, Not the Audience
France reaches further than Australia because it eventually asks every account to prove its age rather than asking platforms to take reasonable steps against the ones that look young. Once that runs across roughly forty million French accounts, on a timetable each platform sets for itself with a verification tool of its own choosing, the age breakdown a platform publishes for a creator’s audience becomes a record of who cleared a check rather than an estimate of who is watching.
This is the part that reaches marketing rather than legal. Creator selection, audience fit, brand safety and campaign valuation all rest on reported audience demographics, and those reported demographics are about to be rebuilt by a compliance process that arrives at a different moment on each platform.
The reported figures are not the only figures available, and never were. Stellar shows the age and gender breakdown behind a creator’s audience, alongside fake-follower rate, community authenticity, follower overlap and past collaborations independently of the platform, so the actual composition of a following can be established before a contract is signed rather than inferred from a dashboard afterwards.
Timing matters more than usual this year. An audience age profile recorded during August is a baseline from before verification began. With it, a February conversation can separate an audience that shifted because of a compliance process from a creator who was never delivering what the numbers claimed. Without it, the two are indistinguishable.
The Parent Was Always the One Paying
PwC surveyed just over a thousand children aged 7 to 14 in early 2026 alongside a thousand parents. Among the children, 61% said social media makes them want to buy something, ahead of friends at 56%, shops at 53% and television advertising at 48%. The same survey found that 60% of those children rely on an adult to pay when a purchase is actually made.
A purchase in this age group is therefore a two-person decision, one choosing and one paying. From September in France, only one of those two can legally hold an account, and it is the one holding the card. The survey also found a visibility gap inside the household: 24% of children said they order through shopping apps on their own, while only 19% of parents believed they did.
Parent and family creators reach that adult on an account that stays legal and verifiable in every market where this legislation is spreading. Separating a genuine parenting audience from one that only reads adult on paper is the same data question as before, and Stellar lets you filter creators by their audience’s age, location and interests across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitch across more than forty filters to establish which is which before a brief goes out.
Reach Will Fall Before Sales Do
Reach is likely to decline for French creators with young audiences through the first quarter of 2027. Part of that decline will be genuine, and part will be verification friction, logged-out viewing and re-declared birthdays, and from the outside the two look the same.
Where reporting rests mainly on reach and impressions, every French campaign in that window reads as a step backwards, which is a reporting problem rather than a performance problem. Stellar turns creator activity into evidence, tracking reach, engagement, EMV, ROI and sales in real time with link and promo-code attribution running through Shopify or WooCommerce, so a campaign that loses 15% of its reach while holding its sales can be shown for what it is, which is a cheaper campaign. Making that case in February requires sales measurement that was already running in August, and the conversation around a brand usually shifts before the dashboard registers it.
Conclusion
The kids do not go anywhere. That is the answer the Australian data gives, and France has chosen a stricter version of the same design. What the ban removes is not the young audience but the ability to see it in platform-reported numbers, and four practical points follow:
- Australia is the forecast, not a curiosity. Five million accounts came down, weekly use barely moved, and the declared ages underneath drifted upward within three months.
- Record a baseline in August. Audience age distribution, fake-follower rate and authenticity for every French creator on the roster were captured before 1 September while those figures still meant what they had always meant.
- Account for who pays. Sixty per cent of children say an adult settles the bill, and that adult can still legally hold an account in every market now drafting this legislation.
- Change the reporting before the reach falls, not after. Sales, promo codes, attributed traffic and sentiment survive a reach correction. Impressions do not.
None of this rests on whether the French law survives constitutional review, because the direction across Europe is already set. What separates the brands that come through it well is whether they knew who sat inside their audiences before anyone was required to check.
Do you know who is actually in your French creators' audiences?
Record the age distribution, fake-follower rate and authenticity across your roster before 1 September, while those numbers still mean what they used to. Then decide which of your creators reach the buyer, and which reach the child.
