UK authorities consults on social media ban for under-16s  

The UK authorities is consulting mother and father, youngsters, know-how firms and civil society teams over proposals to maintain youngsters protected on-line, together with banning under-16s from social media.

A three-month session launched right now, described by the federal government because the “most formidable session on social media”, is searching for views on proposed measures to guard youngsters in opposition to the potential harms of social media, synthetic intelligence (AI) chatbots and gaming platforms.

The measures embrace age restrictions on the usage of digital non-public networks (VPNs), curfews on social media, and restrictions on a spread of know-how features for youngsters, together with livestreaming and sharing their geographic location.

In its session doc, the federal government acknowledged that there could be no exemption for companies that use end-to-end encryption.

Alongside the session, the federal government is planning to run reside pilots with youngsters to check the influence of social media bans, in a single day curfews and day by day display cut-off dates.

Prime minister Keir Starmer introduced plans in a publish on Substack in February to implement a minimal age for social media in a matter of months, to limit addictive options corresponding to infinite scrolling or autoplay for youngsters on social media apps.

The transfer follows bulletins by a rising listing of nations of their intention to introduce social media bans within the wake of Australia’s ban in December 2025, together with Germany, Spain and France.

The UK authorities mentioned mother and father are involved concerning the influence social media is having on their youngsters’s sleep, focus and psychological well being, and are frightened about youngsters speaking to chatbots and counting on their recommendation.

Dad and mom and marketing campaign teams have known as for an outright ban, it mentioned, however youngsters’s charities have warned {that a} blanket ban might drive youngsters to much less regulated components of the web or go away them unprepared after they do go browsing.

The On-line Security Act introduced in robust protections, however there may be rising settlement that extra must be carried out.

The session seeks views on whether or not on-line platforms needs to be required to modify off addictive options, together with infinite scrolling and autoplay, that would maintain youngsters hooked and intervene with their sleep.

The federal government acknowledged that requiring customers to confirm their age with know-how suppliers raises privateness considerations. One approach to implement age limits could be to require each social media consumer within the UK to confirm their age on-line. Another method, as adopted by Australia, could be to make use of a spread of age assurance measures, corresponding to age verification, age estimation and inference, it says.

The federal government mentioned it could invite households and younger individuals to share their views, and maintain “neighborhood occasions”, influencer roundtables, and have interaction with colleges and civil society organisations.

It has devoted variations of the session doc for younger individuals and their mother and father and carers, which it mentioned will make it simpler for them to share their views. 

Expertise secretary Liz Kendall mentioned: “We all know mother and father in all places are grappling with how a lot display time their youngsters ought to have, when they need to give them a cellphone, what they’re seeing on-line, and the influence all of that is having.”