BRUSSELS — Starting Monday, anyone opening a new social media account in Denmark, France, Spain, Greece or Ireland will be asked to prove that they are at least 15 years old, using a government-backed digital credential that discloses nothing but the answer to that single question, in the first coordinated attempt by European Union member states to keep young children off platforms built for adults.
The pilot, coordinated by the European Commission, requires the largest platforms, those with more than 45 million users in the bloc, to check new users’ ages through a standardized app that draws on national identity systems but passes platforms only a yes-or-no token. Existing accounts will be checked progressively over 12 months. Platforms that fail to comply face fines of up to 6 percent of global revenue under the bloc’s Digital Services Act.
“We are not asking children for their passports, and we are not asking platforms to build databases of minors,” said Henrik Thorsen Lund, Denmark’s digital minister, whose government pushed hardest for the scheme. “We are asking a simple question with a technical answer, and we have spent two years making sure the answer leaks nothing else.”
The approach is designed to avoid the pitfalls of earlier efforts. Britain’s age verification rules, which took effect in 2025, were widely criticized after some sites required users to upload identity documents or submit to facial scans, prompting a surge in the use of virtual private networks. Australia’s under-16 ban, which relies on platforms’ own estimation methods, has been faulted for both false positives and easy evasion.
Privacy advocates have been cautiously supportive of the E.U. design while warning about scope. “A system that proves you are over 15 is a system that can be asked to prove you are over 18, or that you are a citizen, or that you are not on a list,” said Dr. Sabine Kreutzer of European Digital Rights, an advocacy group in Brussels. “The architecture is good. The question is who gets to add questions to it.”
Platforms have largely complied while questioning the rollout. One industry group representing large social networks said the technical integration had been completed for all five countries but warned that the 12-month window for existing users would require “re-verifying hundreds of millions of adults to find a small number of children.” The Commission said the figure was closer to 60 million users and that the pilot’s data would be used to refine the approach before a bloc-wide rule, expected to be proposed in 2027.
In Copenhagen on Saturday, parents at a school fair seemed broadly in favor. “My daughter is 12 and has been on three of these apps since she was nine,” said Mette Christensen, 44. “I could not stop her. Perhaps the state can.” Her daughter, standing beside her, declined to comment.
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 11, 2026, Section A, Page 5 of the European edition with the headline: Five E.U. Countries Begin Requiring Age Checks for Social Media, Testing a Bloc-Wide Model.
