Category: child safety

Stephanie Law, 3 July 2026       8 mins read

On Monday the 15th of June 2026, a week before announcing his resignation as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer confirmed that the Government would introduce legislation to implement a social media ban for children and young people in the UK.

The under-16s social media ban reflects a significant step in the UK’s attempts to regulate the online environment, and more specifically, to provide for “a safer digital childhood”. Indeed, for the supporters of a blanket age-based ban, the Labour Government’s commitment constitutes a necessary intervention to protect children’s safety and wellbeing, amongst growing public concern about social media use and the risks arising from children’s access to social media content that may exacerbate mental health concerns and existing vulnerabilities, expanded opportunities for engagement amounting to cyberbullying or exploitation, exposure to material relating to self-harm, suicide and eating disorders, as well as hate speech and misinformation.

While the background of the broader discussions on children’s online safety encompass many tragic incidents, it is necessary to consider whether young people’s exposure to risk in their increasingly intertwined offline and digital lives will effectively be reduced by an age-based ban. Until now, the UK has stopped short of introducing a blanket ban on young people accessing social media platforms. Instead, the Online Safety Act 2023 establishes obligations on platforms to remove illegal content, and content which is harmful to children.

The popularity of social media bans 

The UK’s proposal follows a similar ban implemented in Australia at the end of 2025 while proposals have also been advanced in France, Portugal and Spain. At the EU level, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in November 2025 proposing that the EU adopt a minimum age requirement of 16 for access to social media and video sharing platforms, as well as AI companions. Young people between the ages of 13 and 16 would be able to access such platforms only with parental consent. This age-based ban is envisaged to operate alongside and strengthen the enforcement of the EU’s Digital Services Act (similar to the UK’s proposed ban).

The UK proposes to ban under 16s from accessing user-to-user social media platforms, that is to say, platforms that allow for social interactions between users and on which content can be posted; this would include platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, Snapchat and TikTok. Moreover, the Government intends to implement a requirement that access to certain harmful features on platforms, such as livestreaming, stranger communication (including in gaming) and “romantic companion” chatbots, is restricted to over 18s.

The ban will not apply to direct messaging platforms, like WhatsApp. With these measures, the Government hopes to adopt a model for protecting children online, which goes beyond a simple blanket ban, and instead responds to both the risks children face and their broader experiences online. These risks, the Government argues, are exacerbated by the real-time accessibility of potentially harmful content and tech companies’ use of algorithmic recommender systems, which undermine the scope for effective content moderation.

The decision to introduce a ban follows a short consultation, undertaken between the months of March and May of 2026, in which the Government sought the views of the general public, including parents, guardians and young people, children’s charities and civil society organisations, as well as other stakeholders, including teachers, academics and industry partners. The consultation received over 115,000 responses, with the Government concluding that 9 out of 10 parents and two-thirds of children support restrictions on under-16s accessing certain social media platforms.

The timeframe set out by Keir Starmer and Liz Kendall, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, reflects the Government’s prioritisation of the social media ban. Starmer indicated that the Government would “move at speed” to drive secondary legislation through Parliament using the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, with the intention of putting the ban into place in the Spring of 2027.

The Government has indicated that Ofcom will be responsible for establishing “accurate, robust, reliable and fair” age assurance mechanisms which protect privacy rights, with the aim of ensuring that children cannot work around these restrictions. Platforms will be responsible for implementing these mechanisms, meaning that the platforms and not children themselves will be penalised for non-compliance. Ofcom is designated as the independent regulatory body for online safety in the Online Safety Act 2023; it is competent to identify – through the adoption of guidance and codes of practice – the practices that online platforms should follow to ensure compliance with their obligations, monitor, investigate and assess compliance and take enforcement measures.

The problems with a blanket age-based ban and its alternatives

The decision to restrict under-16s access to social media platforms is by no means uncontroversial. While there is broad consensus across law and policy-makers, public health researchers and child protection advocates that children and young people face a number of risks from accessing specific types of content and from various forms of online engagement, the nature and severity of the risk of those harms is not homogenous. This necessarily gives rise to questions as to the appropriateness of a blanket age-based restriction, relative to alternative interventions that would still allow children and young people to benefit from the opportunities that digital technologies provide. These include – amongst others – access to educational resources (indeed, the UK Government has indicated education platforms are not targeted by the ban), the development of socialisation skills, social inclusion and integration into supportive communities, and exposure to diverse cultures and viewpoints.

The problematics of the ban are significant. There is a danger that the implementation of a blanket ban merely gives the appearance of a Government being proactive, creating a false sense of security as to being in control of a significant problem, in a way that may undermine scope for further regulatory intervention. Regulating a rapidly evolving and complex digital environment driven by a small number of powerful tech companies necessitates informed and critical discussions about the role of technology in society.

While the UK Government indicates that online platforms will be required to implement effective age assurance mechanisms, there is a possibility that parents, guardians and educators will bear the burden of “policing” children’s access and use of technologies that are constantly developing.

As research on the Australian experience illustrates, 85% of under 16s continue to use social media platforms, either by bypassing “simple” age verification mechanisms (i.e. being asked to enter their age), using fake profiles or (a challenge identified by the UK Government), on more rare occasions, using a VPN. Six months after its implementation, the effectiveness of the ban is not yet clear, however the Australian Government has since enacted new legislation to empower its regulator to monitor, enforce and punish non-compliance with the ban.

The UK’s under-16s social media ban must be executed with a view to also implementing alternative interventions that would target the effective enforcement of content moderation obligations by Ofcom. At the same time, a safe digital environment requires safer platform design, and access to resources that aim at improving digital literacy (with enhanced provisional support for the most vulnerable of young people).

Platforms as the real culprits?

On the one hand, the way in which online platforms are designed enhances the risk of harm to children by maximising user engagement. Such design choices include the use of addictive design features and recommender systems, weak default privacy settings and limited transparency, behavioural profiling and targeted and personalised advertising.

Research suggests that digital markets are characterised by substantial power, control and knowledge asymmetries between individuals and tech companies, which leads to an erosion of autonomy, manipulation, exploitation, and addiction as well as broader societal harms to fundamental rights and democratic participation. Digital environments are characterised by digital asymmetry, which describes the structural and systematic conditions of these systems, and leads to digital vulnerability, which is dynamic, contextual and structural; every individual is potentially vulnerable, a condition which may shift depending on the digital environment with which they are faced.

Children and young people may be particularly vulnerable (and are treated as such, for example, in consumer law), with social media exacerbating existing vulnerabilities (through for example, the use of recommender systems which direct vulnerable individuals to increasingly extreme content).

Digital literacy to prepare children for their digital adulthoods

On the other hand, greater digital literacy is required; young people under 16 will, within a few short years, be faced with digital environments which will very likely be vastly different, more complex and more dangerous than those currently in existence. In order to be able to navigate these regimes safely, young people must be equipped with the knowledge and critical analytical skills to – inter alia – recognise misinformation and malicious communication, assess algorithmic recommender systems and manipulative design features, make informed decisions and respond effectively to the risks arising from harmful online content. Under the Online Safety Act 2023, Ofcom has a key role to play in promoting media literacy.

However, what is clear is that the question as to whether the UK’s proposed social media ban for under 16s is appropriate and proportionate cannot be framed as giving rise to a binary choice; restrictions on children and young people’s access to social media must be implemented hand-in-hand with effective content moderation, the regulation of platform design and digital literacy endeavours.