A French parliamentary commission probing the psychological effects of TikTok recommends banning social media for children under 15 and adopting a "digital curfew" for 15- to 18-year-olds, according to a report released Thursday.
Such a ban would "send a signal to both children and parents that before the age of 15," social media "is not harmless," Laure Miller, a lawmaker and rapporteur for the parliamentary commission, told AFP.
The commission was launched in March, after seven families sued TikTok in late 2024 for allegedly exposing their children to content that could push them to suicide.
It heard from families whose children had killed themselves, social media executives, and influencers on TikTok -- owned by China-based ByteDance and used by millions of young people in France -- before issuing its recommendations.
Geraldine, 52, lost her daughter Penelope to suicide at the age of 18. After her death, she discovered videos of self-harm that her daughter had posted and viewed on TikTok.
"It's difficult for us as parents to moderate all this," she told AFP, asking that her last name be withheld.
TikTok has regularly said that ensuring the safety of young people is "its top priority".
The company says it removes more than 95 percent of inappropriate content within 24 hours, and 90 percent before it has been watched even once.
In addition to the ban for children under 15, the commission recommends a digital curfew for 15- to 18-year-olds to make social media inaccessible between 10:00 pm and 8:00 am.
It recommends going as far as banning social media for everyone under 18 if "social networks do not satisfactorily comply with their legal obligations", particularly under the EU's Digital Services Act, within three years.
It also recommends a broad information campaign on social media risks, followed by the creation of a "digital negligence offense" for "irresponsible parents".
According to Miller, recent European Commission guidelines have "opened the door to national regulation", the key to which is "the implementation of an age verification system at registration".
However, such measures are hampered by the reluctance of platforms, technical limitations, and concerns about infringing on individual freedoms.
Several EU countries, including France, Spain, and Greece, have called on Brussels to further regulate children's use of online platforms, amid concerns about their addictive nature and the dangers associated with cyberbullying and the proliferation of hate speech.
'Digital curfew' for teens
Children under 15 in France should be banned entirely from using social media, and those aged between 15 and 18 should face a nighttime "digital curfew", a French parliamentary committee urged on Thursday.
The recommendations were put forward in a report by the committee's lawmakers after months of testimony from families, social media executives and from influencers.
President Emmanuel Macron's office has already indicated it wants to see a ban for children and young adolescents, after Australia last year started drafting its own landmark law with a prohibition for those under 16.
The committee had been set up in March, initially to examine TikTok and its psychological effects on minors after a 2024 lawsuit against the platform by seven families accusing the platform of exposing their children to content pushing them towards suicide.
Its lead report writer, Laure Miller, said the addictive design of TikTok and its algorithm "has been copied by other social media".
TikTok has stressed that that the safety of young users of its app is its "top priority".
Geraldine, the mother of an 18-year-old woman who committed suicide, told AFP that, after her daughter's death last year, she had discovered videos of self-harm her daughter had published and looked at on TikTok.
"TikTok didn't kill our little girl, because she wasn't well in any case," said Geraldine, 52, who declined to be identified by her last name.
But she accused TikTok of falling short in its online moderation, and plunging her daughter deeper into her dark impulses.
- TikTok testimony -
Executives for TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDace, told the parliamentary committee that the app used AI-enhanced moderation that last year caught 98 percent of content infringing its terms of service in France.
But for the lawmakers, those efforts were deemed insufficient, and TikTok's rules were "very easy to circumvent".
It also found that harmful content continued to proliferate on the app, and TikTok's algorithm was effective in drawing young users into loops reinforcing such content.
The committee's report suggested that the ban on children under 15 using social media could be broadened to everyone under 18 if, within the next three years, the platforms did not respect European laws.
Its recommendation for a "digital curfew" for users aged 15 to 18 was for social media to be made unavailable to them between the hours of 10 pm and 8 am.