Greece's Parliament is due to vote on 22 October on a bill that would bar children under 15 from social networks from 1 January 2027. Ministers Akis Skertsos, Adonis Georgiadis and Dimitris Papastergiou presented it on 12 October, and it went to committee the next day. The bill starts with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn, and other networks are to be added gradually. Messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Messenger stay available to teenagers.
The strongest case for the ban
The case for acting is serious. Parents face products built to hold attention, and individual families cannot out-negotiate an infinite scroll. Public opinion backs the government: reporting on the bill puts support at about 80 per cent. On 26 November 2025 the European Parliament voted 483 to 92, with 86 abstentions, for a non-binding resolution calling for a harmonised EU digital minimum age of 16 for social media, video-sharing platforms and AI companions. Under that text, 13- to 16-year-olds could enter only with parental consent. Greece is not an outlier. Its ministers say they are moving ahead of an EU process they expect to take around 20 months.
That is a legitimate argument. Platform self-regulation has not delivered, and a stated minimum age that nobody enforces is worse than no age at all.
What the bill actually does
The bill does not create a Greek fining regime. It requires platforms to apply age checks that are "appropriate, proportionate and reliable", and it routes enforcement through Article 28 of the Digital Services Act. Article 28(1) obliges providers of online platforms accessible to minors to put in place "appropriate and proportionate measures" to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security for minors. Article 28(4) lets the Commission issue guidelines to help providers apply that duty.
The Commission did so on 14 July 2025. Its guidelines on protecting minors recommend age assurance that is "accurate, reliable, robust, non-intrusive and non-discriminatory". They advise age verification where national rules set a minimum age for defined categories of social media, and they point to the EU Digital Identity Wallets, and an age-verification blueprint until those are available, as a reference for device-based checks.
Greece's design follows that logic. Platforms can use their own technology or the state-run Kids Wallet, an app that confirms whether a user is above or below the threshold without handing the platform a birth date. Existing accounts will not be closed automatically on 1 January. Platforms must re-verify the ages of users instead. Telecom regulator EETT can report violations, and platforms based outside Greece are pursued through the DSA.
Where proportionality gets tested
We support the Kids Wallet approach, because it is the right architecture. A yes/no attestation is the privacy-preserving way to check age. It avoids both uploading passports to platforms and the face-scanning estimation that misclassifies many young adults. The ministers deserve credit for building the tool before mandating the check.
Three risks remain.
- The fallback problem. The bill lets platforms use their own technology when they are unsure of a user's age. If the wallet is optional, platforms will default to whichever method is cheapest to defend. In practice that means more behavioural profiling of every user, adults included. The Commission's own "non-intrusive" test should be written into the Greek text, not left to the guidelines.
- A national rule under a harmonised regime. The DSA is designed to stop 27 different platform rules. A national age floor of 15 beside a Parliament call for 16 and a Commission process still under way invites fragmentation. Industry representatives have already raised legal-consistency concerns, and lawsuits are expected. If a court strikes the law down on harmonisation grounds, families will have had a promise that was never delivered.
- Scope by list. Naming four services creates a map for migration. Teenagers who lose Instagram will go to services outside the list, or to less moderated corners. EU authorities are reviewing whether Snapchat should be included. A list-based ban chases products, while a duty-of-care approach follows risk.
The ministers' statement that technology should be regulated "with a human-centric approach" is a good test, and the bill should be held to it. A human-centric rule would measure whether the law reduces harm to teenagers. It would not measure how many accounts were closed.
What to watch
First, whether the 22 October vote keeps the Kids Wallet as a first-line option and not merely an allowed one. Second, whether the bill requires an evaluation. A sunset or review clause tied to the EU-level rule would let Greece's evidence feed back into Brussels. Third, whether enforcement is applied evenly, because the DSA mechanism makes the Commission the decisive actor for the largest platforms, not Athens.
For a pro-innovation reading, the right outcome is a narrow, auditable age signal that other member states can copy. The wrong outcome is a ban that normalises identity checks across the open internet while teenagers move to the platforms the list does not name. Greece has chosen the better tool. Whether the law around it is proportionate depends on the details still being debated in committee.