The European Commission has issued detailed guidelines under Article 28 of the Digital Services Act that allow EU member states to set their own minimum age for access to social-media platforms. The document confirms that outright bans for users below a chosen threshold—15 years in France’s case—would be considered compatible with EU law, provided they are backed by effective age-verification measures. To support enforcement, Brussels unveiled a privacy-preserving age-check application based on zero-knowledge proofs. The tool will be tested from early 2026 in five volunteer countries—France, Denmark, Greece, Italy and Spain—before possible bloc-wide deployment. Users would demonstrate they are over a specified age without disclosing additional personal data; websites would record only a pass-fail signal. French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne welcomed the move as a ‘victory’ after Paris spent two years lobbying for stronger youth protections. France intends to fix the social-media age floor at 15, complementing its 2024 law that already mandates strict verification for pornography sites. Digital-rights groups and some lawmakers warn that algorithmic age estimation and ID checks remain error-prone and could erode privacy if technical safeguards fail. The Commission says the pilot will be audited publicly before any obligation becomes binding, and the guidelines will be reviewed after 12 months to incorporate feedback from child-safety campaigners, industry and data-protection authorities.