Greece has become one of the first European countries to legislate a firm minimum age for social media use, with Parliament approving a law that will bar children under 15 from accessing platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok starting January 1, 2027. The bill cleared its second reading with support from the ruling New Democracy party, while the Communist Party of Greece, Plefsi Eleftherias and PASOK either voted against it or abstained, exposing deep disagreement over how to verify age online without compromising privacy.
A Narrow Majority, a Wide Divide
The vote split along familiar lines but for unusual reasons. New Democracy framed the measure as urgent and necessary, with Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou arguing that lawmakers could not afford to wait for "the perfect European law" while children face what he called "uncontrolled internet use" that fuels addiction and damages mental health. Akis Skertsos, another government figure central to the debate, dismissed opposition objections as "superficial, sterile, and irresponsible." Critics, however, were not merely objecting on principle. KKE and Plefsi Eleftherias opposed the bill from its preliminary stages, while PASOK abstained at the final vote, proposing instead that 13- and 14-year-olds be allowed restricted, parent-supervised accounts rather than a blanket cutoff at 15. Their shared concern was that the age-verification architecture lacks sufficient scientific grounding and was pushed through ahead of a corresponding European Union proposal still in development.
How Age Verification Is Supposed to Work
The mechanism at the center of the law relies on digital tokens rather than document checks. Platforms will be required to confirm whether a user is above or below the age threshold using state-backed applications such as Gov.gr Wallet or the newer Kids Wallet, without transmitting a user's name, exact birth date, or any other identifying detail. Papastergiou has repeatedly stressed that Kids Wallet "does not monitor any page or any message" and discloses nothing beyond a yes-or-no signal on age eligibility. In principle, this approach reflects a broader shift in digital identity design: proving an attribute - age, residency, eligibility - without exposing the underlying personal data that would normally be needed to establish it. It is the same logic behind selective-disclosure credentials now being explored across European digital identity frameworks.
Responsibility for enforcing the check falls entirely on platforms, not parents. The law includes no fines or penalties for families if a minor circumvents the restriction, which raises an obvious practical question: age gates built on self-declared tokens can be bypassed, borrowed, or spoofed, much as current "tick the box" age confirmations already are. Whether a cryptographic token meaningfully raises that barrier, or simply formalizes an honor system, remains to be tested once the law takes effect.
A European Pattern, and a Cautionary Precedent
Greece is not acting in isolation. The government says it is collaborating with Cyprus, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Denmark on a shared European digital solution for age verification, describing the underlying technical project as ready for deployment. Papastergiou has also invoked European Commission conclusions supporting the idea of a minimum age for social network access, positioning the Greek law as a national step ahead of a continental framework still taking shape.
That framework's fragility is not hypothetical. The bill's drafters have had to reckon with France's own experience, where a comparable ban was struck down by the Constitutional Council - a reminder that age-gating legislation sits close to constitutional boundaries involving free expression, parental authority and data protection rights. Greece's law does not restrict internet access broadly; children will still be able to use educational platforms and digital communication tools. But the coming two years will test whether a privacy-preserving verification token can survive both technical circumvention and the kind of legal challenge that derailed France's attempt, while the European Union's own proposal continues to develop in parallel.