UK Brings in Full Social Media Ban for Under-16s
deadline.com
deadline.com
As a parent, I completely agree. We need to protect children from the dangers of the completely uncontrolled "jungle" of social media. But above all, we need to give children back the right to experience a true, real childhood, made up of true friends, fresh air, friendships, and real relationships!
What's stopping you from doing this so far? Handing a child a smartphone is a decision parents can make, withholding access to a smartphone is also a decision parents can make.
This is a worthy tradeoff if you genuinely believe social media to be as damaging for your child as you say it is.
Please correct me if any of the above is a misunderstanding.
If the above are representative, then what I believe you've overlooked here is a the much more difficult issue:
Parents have power over children, at least up to a point, and many platforms provide help with exercising that power. Apple and Google provide some means to restrict social media access which place control in the hands of parents.
Parents do not, normally, have power over other people's children. Parents can influence in-person social circles, somewhat, but without withdrawing children from all situations where they interact with other children, including school, social media's influence upon a parent's children is still very strong via the indirect route.
When a child goes to school, attends a group activity outside of school, or socialises in real life with friends outside of school, there are always children in the groups they meet who either use social media themselves or have older siblings, friends or parents who use social media themselves and who influence those children themselves.
To be clear, I'm not giving any opinion about what's proposed here by the UK government. I wanted only to object to what looks like an oversimplification that makes a false assumption that parents have a level of control and influence that they really don't.
But that doesn't stop them seeing things on social media - when they are at the park, there are always peers there that have a phone and showing TikTok videos or Facebook reels etc, so even though I, as a parent, have blocked it at home, and chosen to not give them a smart phone, they are still exposed to it outside of that.
(And to be be fair, the same happens to me in a way. I don't have any social media logins, but I still get sent links for Instagram/FB/TikTok from friends, or my wife will show me something she's seen there, so it seems there really isn't much escape from it!)
I understand parents' concerns, though I think the price in terms of civic liberties we pay for these social media bans is too high.
BTW, it's worth noting that, in the UK, parents are legally allowed to give their children alcohol, at home, from the age of 5.
Kids have less freedom than ever.
I say it was a mistake because for the generation grown with BBS and 14.4k modems the dangers of an open network were evident and real from the start, even if at the time they were minuscule in comparison to now. Those born with an always on, always connected device already in their hands lacked this awareness from the start.
On one hand, i agree fully.
On the other hand I'm worried about how controlling and orwellian/totalitarian the UK is becoming under Starmer.
https://wtop.com/lifestyle/2025/08/what-kids-say-it-would-ta...
Banks keeps sending me warnings about some new ‘Nigerian prince’ level scams. They wouldn’t be doing it if grownups weren’t falling for them.
General population doesn’t want to setup piholes.
Reminds me of the prohibition era.
There are options that don't involve forcing everybody to prove their age and provide ID verification to access social media
Indeed. Assuming this is the real goal. That would require of people to trust the government. I in general trust no government.
Also, including the mid-teens (15-16) into the regulation may have a generational negative effect. This is the age you start to get interested in the world and how it works. Social Media is the primary medium teens use to get this information, having eclipsed traditional media (magazines, tv shows, radio shows etc.) Banning Social Media for these ages leaves a gap in newer generations maturing to adults.
But maybe that's by design? I.e. make new generations indifferent to the world around them, and also prevent them from building resistance to (home) propaganda spread through Social Media.
Oh yeah, and what about BlueSky, Mastodon and similar? Can they afford age verification? I'm pretty much sure they will be considered "a social media platforms" as well.
Fewer voter from young people, though. The proposed curfew is even more stupid: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/how-uk-social-media-ban-wo...
Which would mean that a sixteen year old would be able to stand in a polling station and vote at 9pm but not then go on Tiktok once they'd left.
(yes, the same government which doesn't trust children with social media has also lowered the voting age. No, this makes no sense. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/representation-of... )
One common route that comes to my mind is this: block [something-dangerous] for children, then implement age verification for [something-dangerous], then use it as a tool of censorship. It's way easier to identify and track individuals based on their passport/ID/driving license than based on their email, IP address or even phone number. And then you're getting jailed for posts somewhere on BlueSky or X or on any other social platform because they were hate speech/disinformation/discrediting the armed forces (the last one is the real thing in Russia, and I just see the UK as the country which goes the same path) - while actually you was just criticizing the actions of people in power.
And you can also legally ban and block platforms, services and even software which doesn't satisfy the requirements of age verification.
That's how I see it; that is, I repeat, my assumptions and thoughts. I have never, never in my lifetime (which is rather short though) seen such proposals turn out to be good.
Conversely, social media is widely established as posing severe risks to children and teens. Heavy use is strongly linked to mental health issues, addiction, and disrupted sleep. It's not that different from banning the sale of hard drugs.
Caution is well advised ... but hard drug equivalent causal effect? Not so much.
Scientists pour cold water on claims phones are rewiring kids' brains
Appearing before the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee this week, three researchers spent much of the session explaining that concern and evidence are not quite the same thing.
Asked what evidence exists on the impact of digital devices on infants and young children, Professor Denis Mareschal, director of the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck, replied: "There is very little, if any, causal research in the early years. Almost everything is correlational."
MPs kept coming back to the question – and the experts kept coming back to the same answer.
When questioned about social media's impact on adolescents, Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of the University of Cambridge was equally cautious. "What evidence do we have of the impact of digital devices or social media on the adolescent brain?" she asked. "Almost nothing. There are a few small studies, but they haven't been replicated, and they're purely correlational."
So you're not anywhere near Russia. Yet.
Note that you have introduced the term "fascist dictatorship" into the conversation, not I. So that may be the issue with how you understand my words. Moreover, when I was comparing Russia to UK, I was only comparing them in terms of censorship and amounts of attempts to enforce a state control over the Internet.
And I fail to see how political and especially cultural climate matters in this discussion. Wasn't it the British prime minister, David Cameron, who back in 2015 pledged to ban all online messaging services which provide end-to-end encryption? Isn't that the UK in which Investigatory Powers Act (2016 one) exists? Isn't that in the UK where voices are heard to ban or regulate VPNs by introducing the mandatory age verification? What about the whole recent UK "Digital ID", or so-called "BritCard" effort? Clearly, the political climate may be different, the cultures may be distinct from each other, but still two countries may wander in roughly the same direction - at least as it seems to me in my personal view - when we're talking about censorship.
My argument was never about the "climate". It was rather about the "current weather", so to speak. And the forecast, based on all these data points, looks remarkably similar - but, I must reinforce, only to me - that's my own, personal opinion.
With all that said, to be completely honest - I don’t really care what happens to the UK. It’s not my country at all; I have no connection to it, and what happens there affects me personally, my family, and my friends about 0%. Whether the UK establishes yet another (in the world) dictatorship with an iron curtain, or simply introduces Internet censorship and surveillance for the good of the people, or manages to preserve true democratic values and not trample on human rights - to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t care less. At least - until the UK’s domestic policies start harming other countries through their expression in foreign affairs. For me, the main thing is that nothing like that happens in my country or on my doorstep; the rest isn’t that important, no matter how cynical that may sound...
Another 'better option' would be to prosecute tech companies that intentionally create addictive, harmful content.
Banning social media use for anyone unwilling to hand over their secure information to private third-parties seems like one of the 'worst options' to me.
Oh yeah, punishing children for mistakes they need to make to learn not to make them and moving responsibility from parents to the government sounds like a great idea.
(There's a bottom 5% of kids whose parents are basically completely negligent or actively abusive, and they end up causing basically all of the problems)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/belfast-riot...
Targeting kids is a distraction from making the difficult choice of confronting powerful adults.
I'm certainly not defending the man, but that comment to me is definitely not plainly seen as "advocating riots"... I'd call that a very disingenuous stretch of the truth.
If we're going to criticize people, I think we need to do it for the right reasons.
For what outcome though, hmm?
The exact opposite logic gets applied against supporters of Palestine such as Sally Rooney, who was threatened with a total ban on her (unrelated) work until the High Court ruled in her favor.
He's not thick, he's (at best) reckless.
Reckless definitely.
"Thick" is presently unclear: a lot of money and an existing competent team can hide a lot of damage upstairs; and it's not implausible that he has done that damage, even just because he is known to have sleeping difficulties[0], and sleeping difficulties are known to correlate with IQ impairment, and that's aside any questions about ketamine (between the war on drugs and AI SEO, I have no idea what that stuff really does).
Might start taking effect in spring 2027
Just so we’re all clear about what this particular social media ban is about. It’s about adults, and connecting a real name and face to online activity at the state-issued identification layer. I’m generally supportive of things like banning smartphones from schools, which is certainly an option the UK could’ve pursued, but this is coming at a time when social media is getting the blame for behavior of adults. Much easier to limit politically annoying voices of citizens when they have to authenticate through the state before logging in to speak.
Taking options away from children will not make their lives better just by itself
And this social media ban might only move the conversation to less transparent channels
WhatsApp and Telegram know more about children than their parents
And child can still spend all doing unhealthy stuff. YouTube kids is addictive enough, at home watching Netflix, playing video games, tablet/phone addictive games...
So the only real solution is force companies to provide better parental controls, maybe aided by AI
And force companies to add better controls/defaults for the population in general to reduce addictive features
Parental controls require parents. Many "parents" don't seem to be interested. So in my opinion the only real solution is to get parents to parent.
As an aside: > Taking options away from children will not make their lives better just by itself
As someone who grew up with fewer options, I disagree. It was precisely because I had so few options that I explored (both physically and mentally).
Probably making fund to provide an alternative social media with vetted content for children, without addictive features like feed scrolling, and requiring in person friendships or school partnership, would probably go further to help than bans
> As someone who grew up with fewer options, I disagree. It was precisely because I had so few options that I explored (both physically and mentally).
Can't see how having facebook banned but roblox, telegram groups, reddit, yt kids available will improve their mental health
But banning everything is also probably just as dumb
On the one hand: _Some_ kind of action is long overdue. For once "protect the children" is actually a valid argument (we should protect the adults too, but baby-steps ...).
On the other hand: Technical people can see this is going nowhere good.
Hmm I guess those kids would use their parents account or something like that.
After all, the government wants to watch everyone, to verify your age now. Gone are the days of anonymity - they want to know your every move.
It's the operators who are responsible, and it's the operators who have the tools and resources available to reduce or mitigate those harms. So it is clearly they who should have taken action.
But they haven't, and so here we are.
But nowadays as a parent I see, instagram, tiktok are much more scarier for the damage they make psychologically and mentally to our kids. And with the AI slop it's only going to go downhill. So yes, it's a great decision, and other countries should follow the lead.
In many of the previous riot/anti-immigrant violence cases, those arrested have substantial criminal records, which tends to lead to the "why is this person not in prison already?" discourse.
(look at how long the court system queues are some time. It can be years from offence to conviction!)
Pop quiz: which British journalist was cited as inspiration in the manifesto of Anders Breivik?
Couldn't get it through the first or second times, just dress it up in "think of the children" rhetoric and run it from the Ofcom quango.
Both of these things can be true. We need to figure out how to navigate this new reality and no action was getting really dangerous.
> Google Wants to Be the ID Checkpoint for Europe’s Internet
https://reclaimthenet.org/google-wants-to-be-the-id-checkpoi...