On 9 April 2026, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced that Greece would ban children under 15 from social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Greece was not acting in isolation. France passed similar legislation in January 2026, Portugal approved age restrictions in February, and Australia introduced a ban in December 2025. Behind each of these decisions lies a record of harm accumulated over more than a decade: viral trends that spread faster than any safety system could catch them, and that left children dead or permanently injured across the world.
The Blackout Challenge
Among the most lethal of these trends is the Blackout Challenge, which instructs participants to deprive themselves of oxygen until they lose consciousness. The concept predates social media: a 2008 CDC report identified 82 probable deaths among young people aged 6 to 19 linked to related behaviour between 1995 and 2007. What changed was scale and speed. When the challenge gained widespread circulation on TikTok in 2021, Bloomberg Businessweek reported approximately 20 child deaths in an 18-month period; other estimates are higher. Cases were documented in Italy, the UK, and the US, where lawsuits against TikTok argued that the platform's recommendation algorithm had actively promoted the content to minors. A US appeals court ruled in 2024 that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the statutory shield platforms rely on to avoid liability for third-party content, does not extend to the design of recommendation algorithms. As recently as February 2026, a nine-year-old girl in Texas died after attempting the challenge.
The Blue Whale Challenge
A different category of danger involves psychological manipulation. The Blue Whale Challenge, originating on the Russian social network VKontakte around 2013, operated through administrators who assigned escalating tasks to participants over 50 days, ending with an instruction to die. Its alleged creator, Philipp Budeikin, was convicted in 2017. The reported death toll has been contested by researchers and internet safety experts, who have described some media coverage as exaggerated. However, the academic literature confirms that the challenge's spread produced documented contagion effects across Russia, India, South Africa, Europe, and Latin America. A study in the journal Primary Care Companion to CNS Disorders describes it as "linked to suicides in virtually every part of the world." Researchers writing in the Journal of Pediatrics in 2025 warned that variants, including the Momo and Jonathan Galindo challenges, may still circulate in less-monitored corners of the internet.
The regulatory response
Mitsotakis framed Greece's law explicitly as a push toward an EU-wide standard. The legislation assigns age verification to platforms using a national digital tool called Kids Wallet, with daily fines for non-compliance. Eighty percent of Greeks support the restriction, according to a government survey, though 57% believe teenagers will find workarounds. In Europe, the Digital Services Act already requires platforms to assess risks to minors.
Sources: Associated Press, Euronews, Bloomberg Businessweek