Children under 15 in France should be banned from using social media, while those aged 15 to 18 should face a night-time "digital curfew", a French parliamentary committee urged on Thursday.
The recommendations follow a six-month inquiry into the psychological effects of TikTok on minors.
Laure Miller, who led the investigation, said the app’s addictive design and algorithm "has been copied by other social media".
"Of course, banning children under 15 from social media should not be the tree that hides the forest," Miller told fellow MPs before the report’s publication. "This is one measure among many, not a panacea."
The committee was set up in March to examine TikTok’s effects on young people after a 2024 lawsuit against the platform. Seven families accused it of exposing their children to content encouraging suicide.
One of those parents, Géraldine, whose 18-year-old daughter took her own life last year, spoke to the French news agency AFP. After her daughter’s death, she discovered self-harm videos her daughter had shared and watched on TikTok.
"TikTok didn't kill our little girl, because she wasn't well in any case," said the 52-year-old, who declined to give her last name.
But she accused the company of failing to moderate harmful content and pushing her daughter further into her struggles.
TikTok said the safety of young users was its "top priority".
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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 lawmakers deemed those efforts insufficient, and concluded 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 under-15s 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 10pm and 8am.
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 law with a ban for those under 16.
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'Dopamine slot machine'
The move to set up the commission received cross-party support.
"TikTok is a dopamine slot machine," said Socialist lawmaker Arthur Delaporte when the inquiry was established.
Although the commission was unable to investigate ongoing cases, it looked at whether or not the application proposed more dangerous content to vulnerable groups.
In 2022, a US study suggested that young users who expressed distress on the platform were shown, on average, 12 times more videos related to suicide and self-harm.
Last February, the European Union opened an investigation into whether TikTok does enough to protect minors.
(with newswires)
