Greece will ban the use of the social media platforms Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Snapchat by children under 15 years old, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday.
Mitsotakis addressed children to announce the ban in a video – published on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram – beginning his announcement with the internet meme “six-seven”, a viral joke that dominated teens’ social media in 2025.
“We decided to proceed with something difficult but necessary: to ban access to social media for children under 15 years of age,” Mitsotakis said.
“Greece will be among the first countries to take such an initiative, but I am sure that it will not be the last. Our goal is to push the EU in this direction as well,” he added.
Minister of digital governance Dimitris Papastergiou explained that age verification will be done through Kids Wallet – a digital control tool via which parents control their child’s mobile phone – in the Gov.gr Wallet, an app in which users manage their own digital documents, such as their driving licence.
“Age tokens will be used. This means that the platform will only know that the user is over 15, without having access to any other personal data or identity information,” Papastergiou said.
Regarding supervision and sanctions, Papastergiou stated that controls will be “exhaustive” and sanctions “extremely strict”, with potential penalties reaching up to 6 per cent of the companies’ global turnover.
The regulation will go for public consultation in the coming months and is scheduled to come into effect on January 1, 2027.
“Our goal is not to distance you from technology,” Mitsotakis insisted, noting the positives of social media, but to stop the “addictive design of certain applications”.
In a landmark ruling in the US last month, a court found Meta and Google guilty of intentionally building addictive social media platforms that harmed a minor’s mental health.