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U.K. Unveils Overnight Social Media Limits for 16- and 17-Year-Olds

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A monthlong experiment restricting teenagers’ social media use found that an overnight curfew offered the best balance between improving their well-being and allowing them to stay connected with friends.

More than 300 teenagers and parents from across the U.K. participated in the trial, which tested three different interventions. Some teenagers were limited to 15 minutes of social media use each day, others were blocked from accessing apps between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m., and a third group removed selected platforms entirely.

Participants reported benefits including improved mood, lower stress, greater energy during the day, better sleep and increased concentration. At the same time, the teenagers described a “social and emotional trade-off,” as social media remained an important way to communicate with friends who were not subject to the same restrictions.

The overnight curfew ultimately emerged as the most popular option, with participants viewing it as less socially disruptive than sharply limiting daily use or deleting apps altogether.

The findings are now informing a new set of online safety measures proposed by the U.K. government Wednesday for 16- and 17-year-olds.

Under the proposal, social media accounts belonging to older teenagers would come with an overnight curfew enabled by default beginning at midnight. The restriction would remain in place until 6 a.m., making platforms including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube unavailable through the affected accounts during those hours unless users changed their settings. Features intended to encourage prolonged use, including autoplay and infinite scrolling, would also be automatically disabled.

Teenagers would still be allowed to turn off or adjust those default settings. The measures are expected to come into force by spring 2027.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the changes would be “crucial in helping young people get the sleep they need, focus on school and college, and spend more quality time with family and friends, all of which are fundamental to building a happy, healthy and fulfilling adult life.”

Online Safety Minister Kanishka Narayan similarly defended the proposals, arguing that the curfew and restrictions on autoplay would make Britain “the most robust place in the world when it comes to regulating” technology companies.

The proposal is part of a broader international effort to place tighter limits on children’s access to social media as technology companies face increasing scrutiny over the safety and potentially addictive design of their platforms.

It also joins an increasingly complicated collection of online safety measures already available to families, including optional parental controls on children’s devices and child-focused versions of major services such as YouTube.

“There have been concerns about the way services keep children and young people engaged on their phones for long periods, and that this can impact their sleep, amongst other effects,” Lorna Woods, a professor of internet law at the University of Essex, told the BBC.

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In June, outgoing U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans for a more sweeping restriction: a blanket social media ban for children under 16. The ban would cover major services including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and X.

The U.K. announcement followed Australia’s move in December to become the first country in the world to enforce a legal social media ban for users under 16.

The government plans to present its latest proposals to Parliament by the end of 2026, to implement them alongside the under-16 ban the following spring.

It also announced plans for additional safeguards governing children’s use of artificial intelligence chatbots, including requirements for providers to introduce regular breaks for users under 18.

European Union officials are also advancing restrictions aimed at younger users. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday that the region would move forward with age limits for social media platforms to reduce use among children and teenagers.

Technology companies, meanwhile, have defended the safeguards already built into their platforms. Ali Law, TikTok’s director of public policy and government affairs in Northern Europe, said during a Tuesday appearance with CNBC that the app was designed with the safety of younger users in mind.

According to Law, TikTok has more than 50 preset protections for users under 16. Those measures include a one-hour daily screen-time limit and a full-screen prompt appearing at 10 p.m. that encourages teenagers to stop using the app and take a break.

“All of these are little default aspects, little nudges to make sure that people have a balanced and healthy relationship with our app, because that works in our interests…because if people are using it for too much and are burnt out, they’re not going to get value from it.”

Other technology companies have argued that responsibility for verifying users’ ages should not rest solely with individual platforms. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has previously called for age verification to be handled by device manufacturers.

Apple has since introduced device-level age checks that ask people using iPhones and iPads with the latest operating software to verify their ages.

Baroness Beeban Kidron, a longtime advocate for device-level safety and age-verification measures, criticized the government for focusing too heavily on restricting children’s access rather than changing the products themselves. She said the objective should not be “banning children from tech” but “banning tech from putting toxic products in the hands of children.”

The ability of teenagers to disable the proposed protections has drawn criticism from campaigners, opposition politicians and online safety experts who question whether the default settings will have a meaningful effect.

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Ellen Roome, who believes her 14-year-old son, Jools Sweeney, died in 2022 after participating in a dangerous online challenge, argued that an optional restriction would be too easy for teenagers to circumvent.

“I just think it’s not good enough really just to have a product you can switch off, it’s a bit like offering a 17-year-old a bottle of alcohol and then moving it slightly out of arm’s reach, they can just drag it back in. I really wish they could go stronger and harder on these things.”

Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, welcomed the attention given to older teenagers but said the announcement remained too narrow.

“While we welcome these measures for older teens, this latest move is yet another piecemeal set of announcements, not the comprehensive plan for children’s safety that’s required,” Burrows said.

Some experts have also warned that a blanket nighttime restriction could unintentionally cut vulnerable teenagers off from support. Sonia Livingstone, a professor specializing in children’s digital rights at the London School of Economics, said a distinction should be made between curbing disruptive platform features and completely blocking access.

“If it’s a curfew on companies using push notifications to wake someone up in the night, absolutely have a curfew,” Livingstone told the BBC.

“But if it’s a curfew that prevents a child in need of support or help or comfort reaching out to trusted sources in the middle of the night, I think that’s quite harmful potentially.”

Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, said young people generally oppose outright bans but support protections from features that encourage compulsive use.

“We have to listen to young people. They don’t want a ban, but they do want to be protected from addictive, infinite scrolling,” she said.

De Souza added that she wanted more details on how the curfew would be enforced and said she would press the communications regulator, Ofcom, to fully exercise its authority over online safety.

Social media analyst Matt Navarra dismissed the proposal as “not a curfew,” but a “mildly annoying settings prompt with a government press release attached.”

“The UK Government is calling this ‘world-leading’ online safety, but with no VPN restrictions, it’s leaving the side door open and putting up a sign asking teens not to use it,” Navarra said.

The government does not currently plan to restrict virtual private networks, which can disguise a user’s location and have previously been used to evade online controls, including Australia’s social media restrictions. Officials said VPNs remain important to whistleblowers, minority communities and families seeking privacy.

Government-commissioned research also found little evidence that large numbers of children were using VPNs to bypass age-verification systems.

“We have decided not to limit VPNs today, and that’s the primary conclusion for now, but it is something we will continue to review,” Narayan said.

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Meta Facing $1.4 Trillion In Damages In Teen Safety Case 

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Meta is currently facing $1.4 trillion in damages in a social media addiction case brought on by four states. Thirty-three states have teamed up to sue Meta over allegations that the tech giant was exploiting its young users on Instagram and Facebook for profit by collecting data from children without parental consent, according to reports. 

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California, New Jersey, Colorado, and Kentucky are four states that are claiming Meta misled consumers regarding the addictive design features on the platforms and causing mental health problems in children and teenagers who began using the internet at an early age. 

Those four states specifically are requesting damages that total to $1.4 trillion, according to Meta in a recent court filing. This number could allegedly increase even further with penalties that the attorneys general could add. 

Meta has denied the allegations and even recently attempted to get the addiction claims dismissed, which failed. In the most recent court submission, Meta’s attorneys argued that the $1.4 trillion in damages was unsubstantiated and disproportionate. 

“Meta has not found any case, under any cause of action, where one defendant was ordered to pay over one trillion dollars – or any number remotely close to that staggering figure.”

Reuters reported that although the states’ filings are sealed, the penalties were calculated by multiplying the number of violations, and the estimated amount of younger users impacted by the addictive aspects of the platforms.

Meta is arguing that the number is so high that “it has no parallel in the history of consumer protection enforcement.”

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“Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission recently described a ‘$1 billion penalty’ as the ‘largest ever in a case involving an FTC rule violation.’ The AGs’ demand exceeds even those record figures by several orders of magnitude, and is in gross disproportionate to the specified violations alleged here,” the filings state.”

The case will be moving to a court in August and if the judge rules against Meta, it could become a major financial issue for the company, whose market capitalization is right above $1.5 trillion. 

Meta executives have admitted for months now to investors that they were anticipating some material loss this year over “the scrutiny on youth-related issues.”

Meta has also been facing growing litigation over alleged deceptive social media practices that specifically target vulnerable young users.

Earlier this year, a judge found Meta and Google liable and ordered them to pay $6 million in damages to a young user, who’s now 20-years-old, who stated that the “deliberate addictive design features on social media platforms like Instagram got her hooked from a young age and exacerbated menthol health problems like depression and anxiety,” Ece Yildirim wrote for Gizmodo.  

Meta also currently has over 3,000 similar cases that are pending in California state court. Another 14 states have also brought up claims similar to the $1.4 trillion case and are set to go to trial early next year.

social media ban

UK To Ban Kids From Social Media, Ministers Lobby With US To Avoid Backlash 

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The UK has announced that they will be banning social media for kids under the age of 16. Some of the world’s biggest technology companies, including Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat, have spoken out against this decision, claiming that it will only work to push teenagers to more harmful platforms. The ban was announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday. 

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said: “As we’ve seen in Australia, bans risk isolating teens from online communities and information, and driving them to unregulated alternatives that lack built-in protections and parental controls.”

YouTube echoed Meta’s sentiment in their own statement: “Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less-safe services.”

And Snapchat said: “Because the majority of time spent on Snapchat is in private messaging between friends and family, an outright ban that disconnects teens from those relationships doesn’t make them safer – it may simply push them to less safe platforms.”

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During Starmer’s announcement at a press conference this week, he said that “social media makes children unhappy, it’s making it easier for billies to harass and abuse them, and it could even be harming their mental health.” He then emphasized the argument that the ban was not anti-tech. 

“I do not accept, and I will never accept, that you can’t be both pro tech and AI, and at the same time say we must protect our children,” he said. 

The plan mimics the one enacted earlier this year in Australia, however, it includes both a ban on all main social media platforms, and separate restrictions on online services such as gaming apps such as removing the option to chat with strangers. 

Under this new ban, kids under the age of 16 will not be able to download Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, X, Facebook, and Instagram. They also will not be able to livestream. Teenagers under the age of 18 will also not be able to use any romantic chatbots designed to simulate sexual relationships. 

“This is not something I do lightly, and I will not present it as cost-free, as if social media has [brought no] benefits to young people, because clearly that is wrong. But the government is always about choices, and it’s clear to me that a total ban is the right choice,” Starmer said.

In Australia, many teenagers have found ways around the bans, which has even led to lawsuits against certain social media platforms for not doing enough to enforce keeping young teens and children off their apps. While this can obviously happen in the UK as well and it is a concern, Starmer stated that it wasn’t the point behind this objective. 

“We don’t say: ‘Oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow, so let’s not bother banning alcohol sales for children.’ We don’t do that, do we? I just don’t accept that,” he said. 

“Our laws are rules, but they’re also an expression of our values. They shape the social contract, and so this will change the conversations that parents have, and the expectations of children over time.”

“It will make a huge difference. It will make our children safer. It will make our children happier. It will give them more time, more security, full freedom to grow up, more opportunity, and that, at the end of the day, is what this government is about,” he added. 

The other side to this is combating the giant companies that are widely against these bans, which is intertwined with talking to the US government and president and reassuring them that this isn’t a targeted ploy towards US tech companies. 

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UK ministers have been working on a lobbying operation to prevent backlash from the Trump administration. The administration had previously threatened the UK with “a big tariff” if the government does not drop its digital services tax, so they’re moving extra cautiously when it comes to this ban. 

“I honestly think that across world leaders there has always been a recognition that leaders have to take steps to protect children,” Starmer said. “In relation to President Trump, I spoke to him on Saturday, I’ll see him again this afternoon and, yes, of course, we’ll discuss this and many other issues, and lots of other leaders are very interested in it.”

Elon Musk, who owns X and has worked closely with the president, said “this censorship law is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone.” 

Ministers are working on every detail of this ban and what it will entail. They’ve announced late-night social media curfews for 16-and-17-year-olds. One of the workarounds that teenagers have used in Australia is using virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent geographical internet controls, so the UK is looking into regulating those networks as well. 

This move will have a major impact on young people. In the UK, among 13-to-15-year-olds about 90% have a social media account, and have stated that their main resource for getting the news is YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, according to reports from the Guardian. 

The UK’s technology secretary, Liz Kendall, echoed Starmer’s sentiment regarding the importance of protecting children and their mental health and not having such a focus on how teens can work around the bans. 

“I have no doubt children who are currently on social media, for whom it’s an integral part of their lives, will try and get around the ban, and many will succeed,” she said. 

“But we do think we need to draw this line in the sand, give greater clarity to parents and greater protections for children.”

“I’ve never thought that the ban will be a complete silver bullet … It will be as much about resetting expectations and social norms for children who are seven, eight, nine, 10, now that they won’t be going on social media until they’re 16,” she told the BBC.

“This is a huge statement of our values, who we are as a country, and it’s a way of actually bringing our country together,” Starmer said.

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Mark Zuckerberg Creating AI Version Of Himself So Meta Staff Can Talk To Him Directly 

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Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is working on creating an artificial intelligence version of their founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, so that the company’s 79,000 employees can “talk directly” to the boss when they need him.

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Meta, TikTok, YouTube, And Snapchat Not Complying With Child Social Media Ban In Australia 

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In December 2025, Australia enacted a law that banned kids under the age of 16 from having accounts on social media. Now, the continent is considering legal action against platforms Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube over allegations that they’re not making enough of an effort to keep children off of the sites. 

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Experts have stated, according to reports, that Australian courts can decide what steps the platforms can reasonably take in order to meet the requirements of the law. 

Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, released a compliance report that demands 10 platforms remove all Australian account-holders younger than the age of 16. 

With the law enacted, 5 million Australian accounts have been deactivated. However, a significant number of Australian children continued to maintain their accounts or created new accounts and bypassed each platform’s age assurance systems, according to the report. 

Inman Grant said in a statement her office had “significant concerns about the compliance of half of those 10 platforms.” Grant’s office was gathering evidence against five platforms that haven’t taken “reasonable steps” to prevent children from having accounts.

Courts could potentially order fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to comply. eSafety is the power deciding on whether to initiate court action against any of the platforms by the middle of the year. 

Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), Kick, Threads, and Twitch are age-registricted platforms that aren’t under investigation. Communications Minister Anika Wells stated that the five main platforms being looked into are allegedly not complying with the Australian law on purpose. 

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“Social media platforms are choosing to do the absolute bare minimum because they want these laws to fail.”

“This is the world-leading law. We’re the first in the world to do it. Of course they don’t want these laws to work because they want that to be a chilling effect on the dozen countries that have come out since Dec. 10 to follow Australia’s step,” Wells told reporters. 

eSafety has emphasized “poor practices” from these platforms. For example, they all allow unlimited attempts for a user to pass their age assurance methods, and even prompt the user to try to pass the age assurance methods. 

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, told AP that they were “committed” to complying with Australia’s social media ban. “We’ve also been clear that accurately determining age online is a challenge for the whole industry.”

Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., said that they have locked 450,000 accounts to align with the law and are continuously doing so daily. “Snapchat remains fully committed to implementing reasonable steps under the legislation and supporting its underlying goal of improving online safety for young Australians,” they said in a statement. 

Lisa Given, information sciences expert at RMIT University in Melbourne, stated: 

“If a tech company has said: look, we put in age assurance, we’ve done all these steps. That’s reasonable. Even though the aged assurance technologies are flawed, whose fault is that? Should they be held accountable for a piece of technology that is not 100% and likely not going to be 100% foolproof any time soon?” 

“That’s really the crux of it: what the courts will deem reasonable,” she said.

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Mark Zuckerberg Defends Meta In Landmark Trial Regarding Social Media Addiction 

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently testified during a landmark trial in Los Angeles Superior Court regarding social media addiction and safety, particularly in teenagers and kids.

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US Senators Call For Scam Ads On Facebook And Instagram To Be Investigated 

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US senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal are calling on the heads of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to open an investigation regarding revenue made from ads on Facebook and Instagram that are promoting scams and banned goods. 

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“The FTC and SEC should immediately open investigations and, if the reporting is accurate, pursue vigorous enforcement action where appropriate to force Meta to disgorge profits, pay penalties and agree to cease running such advertisements,” both Hawley and Blumenthal wrote to the federal agencies.

It was reported earlier this month that internal documents from late 2024 stated that Meta was projected to earn 10% of its overall revenue from illicit advertising, which equated to around $16 billion. One document stated that Meta earned around $3.5 billion in revenue from “higher risk” scam advertisements every six months. 

Documents also stated that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has anti-fraud rules that don’t apply to a lot of these advertisements. 

In response to the report, which came from Reuters, Meta stated that they reduced user reports of scams by 58% throughout the last 18 months.  

Meta spokesman, Andy Stone, said:

 “[The Hawley-Blumenthal letter] makes claims that are exaggerated and wrong, we aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it and we don’t want it either.”

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Both Hawley and Blumenthal expressed their skepticism over Meta’s work to combat illicit advertising, pointing out the company’s “ad library,” which is a publicly accessible database of advertising on Meta’s social media platforms. 

“Even a short review of Meta’s Ad Library at the time of this letter shows clearly identifiable advertisements for illicit gambling, payment scams, crypto scams, AI deepfake sex services, and fake offers of federal benefits,” they said. 

“Scams have been allowed to take over Facebook and Instagram as Meta has drastically cut its safety staff, including for FTC mandated reviews, even as it dumps unimaginable sums into its generative AI projects.”

“While Meta has been warned about advertisement deepfakes impersonating politicians, it still continues to run fraudulent clips,” their letter writes. 

“The beneficiaries of these scams are often cybercrime groups based in China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and the Philippines.”

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Facebook And Instagram Will Charge UK Users For Ad-Free Versions Of The Platforms 

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Meta has announced that Facebook and Instagram users in the United Kingdom will now be offered ad-free versions of the platforms if they pay a monthly fee up to £3.99 ($5.37) a month.

This announcement comes from Mark Zuckerberg as a response to regulatory warnings about personalized advertisements which are generated by using users’ data placed in an algorithm to produce targeted ads. The ad-free subscription service gives users the option to get out of targeted ads. 

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Reports indicate that web users will be charged £2.99 ($4.02) a month and mobile users will be charged £3.99 ($5.37) a month to scroll through Facebook and Instagram without seeing advertisements. 

Additionally, if accounts are linked, users will only need to pay one monthly fee. In a statement, Meta stated: 

“This will give people based in the UK the choice between continuing to use Facebook and Instagram for free with personalized ads, or subscribing to stop seeing ads.”

Users who opt not to pay the monthly fee will continue to see advertisements on their pages as usual. In their statement, Meta said the paid tier services will be rolled out throughout the upcoming weeks. 

This new subscription model is very similar to one that already exists between Meta and the European Union. However, the EU deemed that policy in breach of the digital markets act by the European Commission. The digital markets act is a piece of legislation that was designed to crack down on the overwhelming power big tech holds. 

The commission fined Meta €200 million ($235,125,380) this year after claims that the company could, and should, have released a free version of their sites that utilized less personal data including the users gender, age, and location, to be used to make targeted ads. 

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The Informational Commissioner’s Office is the UK’s data watchdog, and they stated that they support the move from Meta. 

“This moves Meta away from targeting users with ads as part of the standard terms and conditions for using its Facebook and Instagram services, which we’ve been clear is not in line with UK law,” said an ICO spokesperson according to the Guardian. 

The ICO stated this year that internet and Meta users should have the option to “opt out” of their personal data being used to create and push targeted ads. This statement came after Meta settled a court case with a UK citizen regarding targeted advertisements. 

More specifically, Meta agreed in the court case to stop targeting Tanya O’Carroll, a human rights campaigner who alleged that the company breached UK data laws by neglecting to respect her right to demand that Facebook stop collecting her data for the sake of personalized ads. 

After the lawsuit and settlement, Meta announced it was considering creating and implementing an ad-free subscription service to its social networks. 

Gareth Oldale, a partner at UK law firm TLT, stated that the ICO’s support for the new subscription service from Meta exemplifies a divergence between the EU and UK. 

“This position is certainly pro-business and illustrative of the UK government’s direction to regulators to support economic growth and development of the digital economy,” he said. “It does, however, mean that the divergence between the UK and the EU positions has grown a little wider.”

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Meta’s Quiet Push for Your Camera Roll Signals a New Era in AI Data Mining

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Meta is once again blurring the line between innovation and intrusion. The tech giant is quietly rolling out a new feature that gives it access to your entire camera roll—yes, even the photos you haven’t uploaded anywhere—and has yet to provide a straight answer about how it plans to use them.

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YouTube Should Be Included In Australia’s Social Media Ban For Kids Under 16, Commissioner Says 

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Australia’s online safety chief has stated that YouTube should be included on the list of social media platforms that are banned for kids under the age of 16. The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, is urging the government to include the video-sharing platform to the new regulations which apply to apps like TikTok and Instagram. 

Grant is also recommending that the government update the under-16s social media ban to be more specific, and regulate things like stories, streaks, chatbots, and artificial intelligence which can also pose a major risk to young developing minds. 

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The ban was initially brought to legislation in December 2024, and will come into effect in December 2025. It’s currently unclear how exactly these online platforms will verify users’ ages, and the government has even stated that current confirmation technology is “not guaranteed to be effective.” 

At the time of its initial creation, then communications minister Michelle Rowland alluded that YouTube would be a part of the social media sites included in the ban. The Guardian Australia reported, however, that YouTube’s global chief executive personally lobbied with Rowland to give an exemption to the site which is owned by Google. 

Grant spoke with communications minister Anika Wells, offering advice over including YouTube in the ban and why it’s important:

“Given the known risks of harm on Youtube, the similarity of its functionality to other online services, and without sufficient evidence demonstrating that Youtube predominately provides beneficial experiences for children under 16, providing a specific carve out for Youtube appears to be inconsistent with the purpose of the Act.” 

Rowland said that YouTube was exempt from the ban because the site can be used to give young people access to “education and health support.” Grant said this reasoning is “not consistent with the purpose of the obligation to reduce the risk of harm.”

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Grant is planning to dissect this concern further in her press club speech, and will be referencing a relevant survey involving 2,600 children aged 10 to 15. 

“Alarmingly, around seven in 10 kids said they had encountered harmful content, including exposure to misogynistic or hateful material, dangerous online challenges, violent fight videos, and content promoting disordered eating.”

“Children told us that 75% of this harmful content was most recently encountered on social media. YouTube was the most frequently cited platform in our research, with almost four in 10 children reporting exposure to harmful content there.”

“This also comes as the New York Times reported earlier this month that YouTube surreptitiously rolled back its content moderation processes to keep more harmful content on its platform, even when the content violates the company’s own policies,” Grant will say. 

“Platform after platform are winding back their trust and safety teams and weakening policies designed to minimise harm, making these platforms ever-more perilous for our children.”