UK under-16s social media ban brings comprehensive curbs on a wide range of online services

The UK government, following more than 100,000 responses to its national consultation launched in March, has announced a package of measures that it says will better protect children online, including a ban on social media for under-16s. The government also published on 15 June its consultation progress statement setting out a summary of responses and further detail on its decisions.

The overwhelming response to the consultation from parents, carers, charities, academics and children themselves was concern over the harmful and age-inappropriate content that children encounter online. The government says that it has listened and that a ban on social media, which over 90% of parents support, will give children "more freedom to grow up".

While the government plans to follow Australia's model for a social media ban, it has gone further with multiple additional restrictions affecting other product features and businesses across different sectors. The government says that it will "go further than a blanket ban on social media with world-leading blocks on harmful functions such as livestreaming and stranger communication with children for under-16s. These restrictions – which together with the ban go further than any other country – will apply to a wider range of online services."

The measures aim to build on the foundations laid by the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA), which sets out obligations on certain user-to-user and search services to protect UK users, particularly children, from online harms. The full scope of the proposed restrictions, including how they will work in practice and how they will be policed and enforced, remains unclear. Further details, including the government's plans for restricting access to live-streaming and open-contact sites and apps, are expected in July when it plans to publish its full response to the consultation.

Timeline

The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 grants ministers powers to prevent or restrict children's access to social media and other online functions through secondary legislation, allowing the new measures to be brought in relatively quickly. The government plans to introduce regulations implementing the proposed restrictions by Christmas, with the measures coming into effect in spring 2027.

Social media ban

Australia was the first country to introduce social media restrictions for under-16s, imposing a minimum-age obligation on social media companies to prevent under-16s creating or keeping an account with their services. Other countries have since introduced or are exploring similar measures. Last month, the European Commission proposed a "social media delay" for children in Europe, indicating that draft legislation could even be brought forward in the summer.

The UK ban will capture "user-to-user platforms whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allow users to post material, alongside algorithms". The government intends to apply the measures to social media services "whose combination of design features have created specifically risky environments". The ban will encompass many mainstream social media platforms as well as smaller and less well-known sites. There will be a narrowly defined list of exemptions, including e-commerce platforms and music streaming services, and the ban will not capture messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal.

Beyond social media

Although the announcement refers to a "social media" ban, the proposal is in fact much wider and will affect other product features and businesses. Additional restrictions include:

• "World-leading blocks" on children "creating livestreams"; that is, children simultaneously creating and broadcasting video content to one or more people in or very close to real time. Restrictions will apply by default to 16- and 17-year-olds, to prevent a cliff-edge at 16.
• Stranger communication with children for under-16s will also be restricted, applying to a wider range of online services including gaming sites. Again, these restrictions will be on by default for 16- and 17-year-olds to prevent a cliff-edge at 16. Children can still participate in multiplayer games online, the explanatory note clarified, but methods for unknown users to contact and talk with children will be banned.
• The government has also proposed overnight curfews for under-18s, though at this stage it is unclear which digital services would be affected.
• Measures to prevent infinite scrolling will also apply for under-18s – again, it remains unclear which digital services could be covered but these may capture a large number of audio-visual services including streaming services.
• Age-restrictions for certain AI chatbots and functionality will set the minimum age being 18. The government says that it is looking carefully at which parts of services create the greatest risks for children to ensure the protections are appropriate and do not restrict children from the benefits of AI chatbots.

The press release also refers to a narrowly defined list of exemptions which takes out of scope educational services, e-commerce platforms or music streaming. This means that, by default, any other digital platform, digital content or digital service will be in scope which could include audio-visual streaming services and gaming services. The scope of this exemption is not clear either: for example, if e-commerce services facilitate communications between strangers and under-16s, presumably they will also be within scope of the restrictions. It is unclear what this means for e-commerce services embedded in or integrated into social media services.

Age assurance

To implement the changes, the government says that companies will need to introduce "stronger highly effective age assurance" (HEAA). However, it is unclear whether responsibility will fall on platforms, app developers or device-makers. The government intends to work with the HEAA industry to improve the technology to make it more accurate and available for 16- and 17- year-olds.

It will implement lessons from Australia's experience to ensure that children cannot bypass the new restrictions and possibly require the company responsible to implement its preferred, more robust HEAA technology. To start the process, the government has asked Ofcom to conduct a "rapid" study into the effectiveness of age assurance technologies, which Ofcom has committed to delivering by the end of October.

In March, Ofcom and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) published a joint statement on age assurance. The joint statement specified which methods of age assurance Ofcom considered capable of being highly effective, such as facial age estimation and e-mail based age estimation, and which are not such as self-declaration and debit cards. The ICO set out, at a very high-level, how data protection principles apply to the use of age assurance, referencing its updated opinion on age assurance published in January 2024.

Both Ofcom and the ICO had already been assessing age assurance in the months prior to the government announcement, but the new measures are likely to increase the urgency and significance of that work.

Enforcement

Responsibility for enforcement will lie with Ofcom. The government has asked the regulator to publish a report to Parliament on its enforcement strategy under the OSA generally and to reassure the public that robust enforcement action is delivering. As the new measures will increase Ofcom's workload considerably, the government has indicated that it will ensure that the regulator has the funds required to carry out its new responsibilities.

Ofcom will also be deliver an update on its enforcement strategy and outcomes as part of its accountability to Parliament, including a report on the impact of a ban within a year of it coming into force. The regulator will also publish an updated roadmap for implementing the new measures immediately after draft regulations are introduced into Parliament.

Reaction

Reaction to the announcement is divided. Many, including parents and carers, are welcoming the ban and the wider functionality restrictions. Others remain unconvinced. Campaigners such as the Molly Rose Foundation have called it a "blunt response" that risks "an array of unintended consequences", among them, creating a false sense of safety that could lead to children migrating to other areas online and a dangerous "cliff-edge" once they reach 16. They also argue that social media is a force for good, providing children with connection, self-identity, peer support and access to trusted sources of advice and help; all of which could be lost if a ban is introduced.

These voices are instead calling for tougher restrictions on the platforms themselves. The government-convened Expert Panel for Growing up in the Online World has itself concluded that there is a need to focus on "mechanisms and pathways to harm, rather than relying on binary or simplified models", noting that evidence gaps remain substantial on the link between functionality and features leading to harm.

Osborne Clarke comment

Just as many businesses have spent huge amounts of time and effort complying with the OSA, the government has now proposed a new regime that will layer on new and additional restrictions. For businesses operating online services, the proposed measures, once finalised, are likely to significantly expand existing compliance obligations, requiring robust age assurance systems, updated policies and additional operational safeguards. As always with new legislative announcements, the devil will be in the detail. Some of that detail should emerge with the publication of the government's complete response to the consultation, but full details will only be known once the draft regulations are published.

With the EU also weighing up introducing measures that would apply across all member states, the appetite for more robust measures to protect children online is growing and this proposal forms part of that increasingly global trend. The UK's online child protection regime began as a set of tentative protections on video sharing platforms, then evolved in the form of a code of practice – the age appropriate design code, now known as the children's code – before the more robust measures of the OSA. The government has now taken the ultimate form of prohibition as a blanket ban on social media for under-16s.

This proposal, however, is much more than just a social media ban. It introduces a comprehensive package of restrictions covering a wider range of online services, meaning that any online service should monitor these developments carefully to ascertain whether they may fall into scope. In the meantime, policy teams may seek to get their services added to the list of exempt services such as e-commerce services, music streaming services and educational services.

Although the government plans to lay the proposal before Parliament by Christmas, there are likely to be potential technological, operational and political hurdles to overcome before that can happen. The government intends to bring in the ban via secondary legislation, which can be challenged by judicial review. There is speculation in the UK that some tech companies may mount a challenge to the government's decision. While they would face a high hurdle to overturn the decision itself, challenges to the codes and guidance that Ofcom is likely to issue to implement and enforce the ban may prove more influential in shaping the eventual regime.