Human rights chief warns against banning social media for kids

European countries should not rush into social media bans for children, human rights adviser Michael O’Flaherty told POLITICO.

The comments come as many EU countries push to restrict minors’ access to social media, citing mental health concerns. In France, the parliament’s upper house is this week debating restrictions that President Emmanuel Macron has said will be in place as soon as September.

Such bans are neither “proportionate nor necessary,” said O’Flaherty, the commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights body, adding that there “are other ways to address the curse of abusive material online.”

The debate on how to protect children from the harms of social media “goes straight to bans without looking at all the other options that could be in play,” he told POLITICO. Restricting access to social media presents “issues of human rights, because a child has a right to receive information just like anybody else.”

O’Flaherty’s concerns come amid live discussions on the merits and effectiveness of bans in Europe. Australia became the first country in the world to ban minors under 16 from creating accounts on social media platforms like Instagram in late 2025, and Brazil moved forward with its own measures last week.

Now France, Denmark, Spain and Greece are among the EU countries heading toward bans, albeit on different timelines.

Proponents argue that age-related restrictions setting a minimum age for the most addictive social media platforms are vital to protect children’s physical and mental health.

Critics say that bans are ineffective and are detrimental to privacy because they require users to verify themselves online.

O’Flaherty argued that — while children’s rights to access information could be curtailed if that overall limited their risks — any restrictions need to be proportionate and necessary.

That must follow a serious effort by the EU to tackle illegal and harmful content on social media, he said, which hasn’t happened yet. “We haven’t remotely tried hard enough yet to ensure effective oversight of the platforms.”

The human rights chief praised the EU’s digital laws as world-leading, including the Digital Services Act, which seeks to protect kids from systemic risks on online platforms — but said it wasn’t being policed strongly enough.

“We have a very piecemeal enforcement of the Digital Services Act and the other relevant rulebook right across Europe. It’s very much dependent on the goodwill and the capacity of the different governments to be serious about it,” he said. Governments have “an uneven record” in that regard, he said.

The European Commission, in charge of enforcing the DSA on large social media platforms, is considering its own measures. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

EU countries must make sure they have exhausted all other solutions before heading for the extreme measures of bans, he said. “I don’t see much sign of that effort.”

Still, Denmark, Spain and Greece are among the EU countries heading toward bans, although they are on vastly different timelines.

The European Commission, in charge of enforcing the DSA on large social media platforms, is considering its own measures. Countries like Greece have called on the Commission to go forth with an EU-wide ban to avoid fragmentation across the bloc.

President Ursula von der Leyen has convened a panel of experts to advise her on next steps, which is expected to give its results by the summer.