One-Fifteen: Greece Sets the Age Floor for Social Media Access

Effective January 1, 2027, children in Greece will be legally barred from accessing major social media platforms unless they are at least 15 years old. The parliament recently finalized the legislation, marking a significant shift in the country’s digital policy and positioning Greece as one of the first European Union members to enforce such a specific age threshold. The measure targets popular services including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X, requiring them to implement robust age-verification systems to comply with the new standards.

The path to enactment was not without political friction. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who initially proposed the measure earlier this year, described the bill as "difficult but necessary." Despite opposition from minority parties, his majority government pushed the legislation through the legislative process. The move follows a 2024 directive that restricted mobile phone use in schools, suggesting a broader governmental strategy to limit young people's digital exposure. Recent opinion polls indicate that the adult population largely supports the new restrictions.

Enforcement will rely on a combination of platform compliance and parental oversight. Non-compliance with the act will trigger fines under the existing EU Digital Services Act. To assist families, the state is introducing specific applications known as Kids Wallet and Gov.gr. Parents will need to download these tools and pair them with their child’s device to block unauthorized access. The system utilizes "age tokens" designed to verify a user's age while minimizing the amount of personal data disclosed, a feature the digital governance minister highlighted as a key privacy protection.

Dimitris Papastergiou, Greece's minister for digital governance and AI, defended the national approach against those who prefer to wait for a unified European solution. He argued that waiting for a perfect EU law was not an option given the current state of children's online habits. "It would have been very easy to do absolutely nothing today and wait for the perfect European law. But the challenge is here. Children are sinking into the internet every day, and I believe a responsible government must do what it is obliged to do," Papastergiou stated.

The timing of the Greek law coincides with broader regulatory movements across the continent. The European Commission has recently introduced the EU Kids Act, which aims to standardize digital safety rules across the bloc. However, that proposed legislation currently stipulates an outright ban only for children under 13, a lower threshold than Greece’s new standard. Mitsotakis has indicated that Athens intends to influence the EU’s direction, using its domestic law as a precedent for regional policy.

While the Greek model is gaining traction, its practical implementation remains a subject of scrutiny. Australia holds the distinction of being the first nation to enact a full social media ban for minors, but it has faced significant challenges in effectively verifying ages at scale. Greece’s reliance on state-backed apps and digital tokens represents a different technical approach, but the long-term efficacy of these methods in a diverse digital landscape is yet to be determined.

As the January 2027 deadline approaches, the focus will turn to how platforms adapt their verification algorithms and whether the parental apps achieve sufficient adoption. For now, Greece stands at the forefront of a growing global debate on balancing childhood digital safety with technological convenience.