France’s Plan to Ban Internet Until Citizens Behave

France Joins China, North Korea, Russia and Iran in Historic Plan to Ban Internet Until Citizens Behave

PARIS, FRANCE — France has taken its first stately step toward joining China, Russia, Iran and North Korea in the prestigious international brotherhood of governments that believe the internet would be wonderful if it contained fewer people.

The French Parliament approved legislation on July 21, 2026, barring children under fifteen from social-media platforms. New accounts are to be prohibited beginning September 1, while platforms receive four months to remove existing underage accounts and introduce approved age-verification systems. The actual law concerns minors and social media, not a nationwide internet shutdown. Fortunately, satire exists to take a limited government measure, place it on roller skates and push it toward the nearest cliff. s presented the measure as protection against online bullying, addictive design and potential harm to young people’s mental health. Critics, however, fear that broad age-verification requirements could normalize identity checks and produce new privacy concerns, particularly if today’s barrier for children becomes tomorrow’s digital turnstile for everyone. The European Commission is also examining whether the measure fits comfortably within existing EU law. that the country was joining an authoritarian internet alliance, explaining that France remains a democracy and that its restrictions are motivated by child welfare rather than political control.

This reassured everyone except people who have previously heard a government explain why it needs more personal information.

Under the proposed expansion imagined exclusively by this newspaper, France will establish the Ministry of Safe, Responsible and Government-Compatible Clicking, headquartered inside a former post office where the Wi-Fi password must be requested by registered letter.

Citizens wishing to visit a website will submit Form WEB-14B, declaring the purpose of the visit, the anticipated emotional consequences and whether the page contains opinions not already available from France Télévisions.

Applicants will receive a decision within six to eight working months.

“We are not banning the internet,” explained a satirical ministry spokesman while unplugging the router. “We are merely creating a safer, slower and more contemplative internet in which every citizen has adequate time to reconsider opening it.”

China welcomed the French initiative with the diplomatic warmth of a prison guard discovering a new lock manufacturer.

China operates the world’s most extensive system of online censorship, commonly known as the Great Firewall. Thousands of domains are blocked, content is heavily manipulated, and authorities possess enormous power to restrict digital expression. Freedom House’s 2025 assessment described China’s online environment as intensely censored and surveilled, while Reporters Without Borders ranked the country 178th out of 180 in its 2025 press-freedom index. rance a starter package containing twelve kilometres of digital fencing, a censorship algorithm and a complimentary euphemism generator.

The euphemism generator immediately renamed censorship “harmonious information gardening.”

Russia also expressed enthusiasm. Freedom House gave Russia an internet-freedom score of 17 out of 100 in 2025 after authorities expanded website blocking, surveillance, throttling and attempts to isolate Russian users from the global internet. Critical news outlets and foreign platforms have faced restrictions, while users have been imprisoned for online criticism of the invasion of Ukraine.

Russining seminar, From Moderation to Motherland, will teach officials how to describe an internet outage as a temporary patriotic improvement in national bandwidth.

The first lesson is expected to explain that websites never disappear. They merely relocate to a secure location where citizens cannot upset themselves by reading them.

Iran offered France its own expertise in selective connectivity. Iran scored 13 out of 100 in Freedom House’s 2025 internet assessment. Authorities have blocked or filtered most major social platforms, pressured users toward a more controllable domestic network and repeatedly employed shutdowns, surveillance and punishment against online expression.

In o demonstration of state sensitivity, an Iranian journalist and activist received a twelve-year sentence after posting a single punctuation mark beneath a message from the supreme leader. It was perhaps history’s first case of a government losing an argument to a full stop.

Francarefully before deciding that punctuation would remain legal, although sarcastic semicolons may require parental consent.

North Korea, meanwhile, congratulated France using its national intranet, which delivered the message internally to precisely the people already authorised to agree with it.

The country remains one of the world’s most isolated information environments. Reporters Without Borders ranked North Korea 179th out of 180 countries in 2025 and documents severe punishment for journalists who deviate from the state narrative. tedly expressed confusion about France’s age limit.

“Why fifteen?” asked a representative from the Ministry of Correct Thoughts. “Dangerous information does not become safer because a citizen has celebrated another birthday.”

That question caused three French civil servants to glance thoughtfully at the ceiling.

Myanmar also requested observer status in the new organisation. Its military government scored 9 out of 100 for internet freedom in 2025 after imposing localized shutdowns, blocking VPNs and Signal, manipulating information and imprisoning people for online dissent. Freedom House described it as one of the world’s worst environments for internet freedom.

Cubaing the inaugural meeting because the electricity was unavailable and the conference invitation had been posted on an independent news site. Freedom House rates Cuba’s internet environment “Not Free,” with a score of 21 out of 100, citing the one-party state’s suppression of independent media and severe restrictions on civil liberties.

Franisons were absurd.

France is not imprisoning teenagers for using Instagram. It is not building a Chinese-style national firewall, establishing a Russian sovereign internet or confining citizens to a North Korean intranet. It is trying to reduce children’s exposure to addictive platforms whose business models often reward endless attention, outrage and emotional volatility.

That is the reasonable argument.

The less reasonable part is believing millions of teenagers will calmly surrender their accounts and rediscover pétanque.

Australia’s comparable under-sixteen restriction offers a cautionary punchline. Research reported after its ban suggested that more than 85 percent of younger teenagers continued using social media anyway. Government had constructed a magnificent digital gate, and the children immediately walked around it wearing VPN moustaches.

Frency to prove less resourceful. These are young people who can create an account, edit a video, alter their location, conceal an application and explain blockchain before their parents have located the television remote.

Within twenty-four hours of the French vote, the imaginary share price of PetitVPN, a company headquartered in a Luxembourg letterbox above a bakery, rose 4,700 percent.

Its advertising slogan reads: “Protecting French childhood by pretending it occurred in Belgium.”

Schools are preparing for the new regime by adding cybersecurity to the curriculum. Students will study mathematics, history, literature and advanced techniques for convincing an age-verification system that they are a forty-six-year-old forklift mechanic from Brest.

Parents have also been issued guidance.

They should communicate openly, establish healthy limits and periodically ask their children whether “the dark web” is the one with night mode.

The government’s central problem is real. Social-media platforms can expose young users to bullying, compulsive engagement, harmful material and relentless commercial pressure. But restricting access without addressing digital literacy, parental involvement, platform design and enforcement may simply transform ordinary teenagers into highly motivated circumvention specialists.

It is the classic false dilemma: either children receive unlimited algorithmic sludge or the government collects enough identity data to determine who may watch a dancing cat.

There are more options.

Platforms could face stronger requirements on addictive design, data collection, advertising to minors and algorithmic promotion. Parents could receive better tools and clearer education. Schools could teach digital judgment rather than assuming prohibition creates wisdom.

A locked cupboard does not teach nutrition. It teaches where the spare key is kept.

France may therefore discover that its ban produces the opposite of its intended result. Social media will become exciting again. TikTok, previously a repetitive conveyor belt of dances, arguments and suspiciously enthusiastic skin-care advice, will acquire the forbidden glamour of underground literature.

Teenagers will gather in dimly lit bedrooms and whisper:

“Have you seen the prohibited thirty-second video of a hamster wearing sunglasses?”

“No.”

“My cousin downloaded it from Switzerland.”

By 2027, France’s youth may possess Europe’s highest concentration of encryption expertise. Universities will report record applications to computer-science programmes. Intelligence agencies will recruit directly from secondary-school lunchrooms.

The government will announce that the policy has created thousands of skilled technology workers and was therefore an economic programme all along.

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea will watch with admiration.

They spent decades building elaborate censorship states.

France may achieve the same level of citizen ingenuity merely by telling fourteen-year-olds they cannot use Snapchat.

Helpful Guidance for French Families

Parents should discuss online risks without treating every screen as a portal to civilization’s collapse. Young people benefit from boundaries, but they also need trust, critical-thinking skills and safe opportunities to learn how digital platforms manipulate attention.

Teenagers should remember that circumventing an age restriction may violate platform rules or national law. They should also avoid suspicious VPN services that collect data, install malware or promise complete anonymity from an office located behind a petrol station.

Government officials should remember that every new verification system creates a database, every database creates a tempting new purpose and every tempting new purpose eventually receives its own departmental logo.

Disclaimer

This is satire. France has approved an under-fifteen social-media restriction, not a Chinese-style ban on the global internet. The alliance, ministries, diplomatic exchanges, quotations, forms, programmes and Luxembourg forklift mechanic are comic inventions built around documented internet-censorship practices.

This story is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. Any resemblance to sensible public policy is accidental and should be reported immediately to the appropriate bureaucracy.

Fifteen Observations

1. France Has Banned the One Place Teenagers Were Ignoring French Politicians

For years, ministers complainedticing government contradictions, France has bravely restored disengagement.

2. The Government Is Protecting Children From Bad Ideas by Giving Them a Very Interesting New Idea

That idea is called a virtual private network. Nothing accelerates technological literacy faster than telling a fourteen-year-old, “This button is forbidden.”

3. China Built the Great Firewall; France Has Ordered the Café-Sized Version

The Chinese system blocks vast quantities of information. The French version begins with TikTok, comes with a croissant holder and will be unavailable during lunch.

4. North Korea Welcomed France to the Internet Management Community

Pyongyang reportedly sent Paris a congratulatory modem capable of connecting to one approved website containing seventeen photographs of the Supreme Leader looking at potatoes.

5. Russia Offered Technical Assistance

Moscow volunteered to teach France how to protect citizens from misinformation by ensuring all misinformation originates from one dependable government office.

6. Iran Recommended Switching the Internet Off During Difficult Questions

This saves officials from answering criticism and protects citizens from the psychological damage caused by discovering other citizens agree with them.

7. Age Verification Will Definitely Remain About Age

Governments have never collected information for one narrow purpose and later discovered seventeen completely unrelated administrative uses for it.

8. France Has Created Europe’s Largest Unpaid Cybersecurity Internship

By September, every French teenager will know more about proxy servers, encrypted browsers and Luxembourg’s data laws than the average cabinet minister.

9. Teenagers Must Now Prove Their Age to Watch Other Teenagers Dance

Meanwhile, adults may continue spending eight hours daily arguing with strangers called “PatriotDad1776” and “MarxistHamster.”

10. Social Media Is Dangerous, Unlike French Streets, Schools, Politics and Public Transport

The government has isolated the final remaining source of adolescent anxiety: videos in which attractive people recommend moisturiser.

11. The Ban Assumes Teenagers Obey Instructions

This theory has not been tested since the invention of teenagers.

12. France Is Solving Social-Media Addiction With Scarcity

Economists traditionally call this “making the forbidden product vastly more desirable.”

13. Parents Will Finally Regain Control

They will do this by asking their children how to reset the Wi-Fi router.

14. The Government Has Discovered the Perfect Internet

It contains tax-payment portals, public-health announcements and no comment section beneath ministerial speeches.

15. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity Have Received a Digital Update

Liberty is available after age fifteen. Equality requires facial verification. Fraternity has been temporarily suspended for violating the platform’s community guidelines.