A 14-year-old checks social media posts, as Greece is set to ban under-15s from social media in European crackdown, in Athens, Greece, February 26, 2026. REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
A growing chorus of European governments is wrestling with how to shield children from the darker side of the internet — and Greece has now drawn a firm line. Starting January 1, 2027, minors under the age of 15 will be barred from accessing social media platforms in the country, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced Wednesday.
The move, he said, was driven by mounting evidence of anxiety, sleep disruption, and the deliberately addictive architecture baked into online platforms.
The decision did not come without public backing. A February opinion poll by ALCO found roughly 80% of respondents supported such a ban — a figure that likely emboldened the government, which had already taken preliminary steps by banning mobile phones in schools and rolling out parental control tools to help families manage teenagers’ screen time.
Greece’s parliament is expected to legislate the ban by mid-2026, ahead of its January 2027 implementation. Once in force, platforms that fail to restrict underage users will face penalties under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) — fines that can reach as high as 6% of a company’s global turnover, Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou said.
For now, Greece lacks the legal authority to compel social media companies to verify the ages of their users directly. The government is instead urging platforms to adopt verification mechanisms already outlined by the EU and Greece, while also calling on parents to play an active role in enforcement.
Mitsotakis framed the initiative as a regional starting pistol, not a finish line. “Greece will be among the first countries to take such an initiative,” he said in a video message. “I am certain, however, that it will not be the last. Our goal is to push the European Union in this direction as well.”
To that end, the Prime Minister wrote directly to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, arguing that individual national measures would fall short without coordinated bloc-wide action. In the letter, he proposed establishing an EU-wide “digital age of majority” set at 15, requiring mandatory age verification and periodic re-verification across all platforms, and creating a unified enforcement and penalty framework — with a target of having the system operational by end of 2026.
State Minister Akis Skertsos echoed that urgency at a joint press conference, cautioning that domestic legislation could only go so far. “National legislation is linked and influenced to a large extent by EU legislation,” he said. “Unless we have an EU legislative framework…national legislation alone will be ineffective.”
Greece is not alone in tightening the screws. The United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Malaysia, and Poland are all either actively considering or in the process of legislating similar restrictions. Australia, however, has gone furthest — becoming the world’s first country to ban social media for children under 16 when it enacted its law in December, blocking platforms including TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Meta, Snapchat, and TikTok voiced skepticism about the Australian ban’s effectiveness but said they would comply with it regardless.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah