U.K. bans social media for minors

The U.K. is rolling out a social media ban for children under the age of 16, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday. The ban will protect children from harmful content and excessive screen time, he said. A range of social media apps, including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X, will be required to take steps to keep minors off their sites. If they don’t take reasonable steps to exclude children, they could face multimillion-dollar fines. The changes are set to be implemented as soon as the spring of 2027. However, apps like WhatsApp and Signal will not be included in the ban.

The U.K.’s move modeled a similar social media ban in Australia, which last year became the first country to bar minors nationwide from having social media accounts. The U.K.’s ban will extend further than Australia’s, however. The British government plans to prohibit users under the age of 16 from livestreaming and communicating with strangers. Additionally, the U.K. government said it was looking into overnight curfews and measures to limit infinite scrolling for anyone under the age of 18. More details are set to be released in July.

How will the ban be enforced? Social media sites will be required to verify the ages of their users. While opponents have expressed concern about sharing ID’s or participating in face scans for verifications, the government said many adults won’t need to complete checks. Adults can be verified through other means, such as by having their accounts open for more than 16 years or linking a credit card to it.

Starmer acknowledged that some teenagers would try to find a way around the ban. But he emphasized that just as teenagers have tried to work around age requirements for alcohol purchases, that doesn’t mean any attempts to stop teens from buying drinks should be abandoned.

What pushback has the ban received?

• Blanket bans have pushed kids out of supervised and curated social media sites, a spokesman for YouTube told WORLD. Instead, kids will seek out anonymous, less safe services.

• Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, echoed this. In a blog post, the company insisted that age verification has often raised security and privacy concerns.

• The ban could give parents a false sense of safety, the Molly Rose Foundation previously said. The nonprofit was established after British teenager Molly Russell took her own life due to social media content she viewed.

Have other countries implemented bans? Canada has proposed a bill similar to Australia’s and the U.K’s. Brazil and Indonesia have introduced age-based social media restrictions that primarily deal with pornographic content.

Since Australia’s ban took effect in December, authorities have struggled to fully enforce it. In March, around seven in 10 parents in the country reported their child still had a social media account on restricted platforms, according to Australia’s eSafety Commission.

Dig deeper: Read Christina Grube’s report on Australia’s countrywide social media ban for minors.