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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.

social media ban

Australia Enforces Nationwide Social Media Ban for Users Under 16

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Australia’s attempt to redraw the boundaries of adolescence in the digital age took effect this week, as a sweeping new law barred anyone under 16 from using major social media platforms. Overnight, millions of young Australians found themselves locked out of the online spaces that have functioned as their group chats, hangouts, diaries, and after-school social arenas.

The move, described internationally as a first-of-its-kind experiment, is forcing companies such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Facebook, Threads, Twitch, Kick and X to begin stripping underage accounts and blocking new ones. Failure to do so could cost platforms up to $49.5m, a figure that has captured the attention of tech firms worldwide.

Even before the official start date, confusion rippled through the rollout. Age-verification systems, most of which use some form of facial analysis, have already shown holes. Some children managed to pass as adults, prompting the federal government to reiterate that no one expects “perfection on day one.”

Still, regulators maintain that the law’s intent must be met. Platforms must demonstrate they are taking “reasonable” steps to keep kids under 16 out.

Every major company except X told regulators by Tuesday that they would comply, though they initially resisted. Snapchat released a statement acknowledging the new law in late November.

“Disconnecting teens from their friends and family doesn’t make them safer — it may push them to less safe, less private messaging apps. We continue to advocate for more privacy-conscious solutions, such as mandating age verification at the device, operating system, or app store level.

Australia’s eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said her office had recently spoken with X about how it plans to comply. Still, the company has yet to explain its plan to its users. “I’ve always referred to this as the first domino, which is why they pushed back,” she said, referring to social media companies.

In a surprising twist, Bluesky, an emerging competitor to X, announced it would mirror the ban even though eSafety had classified it as “low risk,” due to its comparatively tiny 50,000-person Australian user base.

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For children, the weeks leading up to the ban have been a scramble of contingency planning. Many rushed to complete age checks, swap private phone numbers, or brace themselves for account deletion. Kieran Donovan, co-founder and Australian CEO of the age-assurance provider k-ID, said his service has handled “hundreds of thousands” of checks recently. Among the companies relying on k-ID is Snapchat.

“With one law, we can protect Generation Alpha from being sucked into purgatory by predatory algorithms described by the man who created the feature as ‘behavioral cocaine,’” Communications Minister Anika Wells told the National Press Club.

Families, meanwhile, are deeply divided. One mother said her 15-year-old is “very distressed” after discovering that “all her 14 to 15-year-old friends have been age verified as 18 by Snapchat,” while she alone was tagged as underage. The teen worries that “her friends will keep using Snapchat to talk and organize social events, and she will be left out.”

Some parents have headed in the opposite direction by actively circumventing the law. One father said the ban forced him into an uncomfortable role.

“I’ve shown her how VPNs work and other methods on bypassing age restrictions. I’ve had to set her up with her own adult YouTube account and have assisted her in bypassing TikTok’s age-estimation and will keep doing so each time it asks.”

Others argue the crackdown is overdue. One parent described their daughter as “completely addicted” to social media and said the new rules “provide us with a support framework to keep her off these platforms.”

Two teenagers are suing the Australian government over the ban. One of them, Noah, 15, argues that the ban will rob teenagers of an important educational medium.

“Do you want 15-year-old boys to have no clue about consent? Do you want teenagers who don’t know about the dangers of vaping? Both topics I’ve learned about on social media.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stepped in to defend the sweeping changes over the weekend.

“From the beginning, we’ve acknowledged this process won’t be 100% perfect, but the message this law sends will be 100% clear. Australia sets the legal drinking age at 18 because our society recognizes the ­benefits to the individual and the community of such an approach. The fact that teenagers occasionally find a way to have a drink doesn’t diminish the value of having a clear, national standard.”

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Polls repeatedly show around two-thirds of voters back the 16-plus rule, but political unity has begun to wobble. Opposition figures, including deputy leader Sussan Ley, have recently expressed unease, despite previously allowing the legislation to pass through parliament.

Other countries are watching closely. Malaysia, Denmark, and Norway have all indicated they are preparing similar laws, and the European Union recently passed a resolution supporting comparable restrictions. A spokesperson for the UK government told Reuters it was “closely monitoring Australia’s approach to age restrictions.”

Now that the ban is active, scrutiny of how platforms enforce it will intensify. Inman Grant said that starting Thursday, her office will issue notices requesting detailed updates, including “how many accounts [they’ve] deactivated or removed, what challenges they’re finding, how they’re preventing recidivism and preventing circumvention, whether or not their abuse or reporting abuse and the appeals processes are working as planned.” Albanese has committed to making the resulting data public.

If regulators decide a platform isn’t doing enough, they can take it to court to seek fines. Alongside enforcement, an academic advisory group will undertake an independent, multi-year review to examine the impacts of the ban across childhood development, mental health, and education.

“It will look at the benefits over time, but also the unintended consequences. Everything from are sleeping? Are they interacting, or are they actually getting out on the sports fields? Are they reading books? Are they taking less medication, like antidepressants? Are their NAPLAN scores improving over time?”

At the same time, the office will monitor whether children begin drifting toward “darker areas of the internet,” turning to VPN workarounds, or migrating to lesser-known platforms with minimal oversight.

Such migration is already happening. Ahead of the cutoff, some teens on Snapchat publicly posted their mobile numbers in their bios to keep social circles intact after their accounts disappeared, something Snapchat strongly warned against.

A spokesperson said the company appreciated that under-16s were disappointed but “would strongly encourage any teens using Snapchat not to publicly share their personal contact information.”

The regulatory net may widen again soon. Inman Grant confirmed that she has issued notices to 15 additional companies not originally covered, asking them to assess whether they should now fall within the scope of the ban. Among them are Yope and Lemon8, apps that suddenly climbed the download charts as teens searched for new digital refuges