A Line in the Sand, or a Leap in the Dark? Weighing the Under-16 Social Media Ban

Image - Ron Lach

In June, the UK Government announced that social media would be banned for under-16s with protections expected to come into force by Spring 2027. The press release outlining the Labour Government’s decision frames it as a way to give children back their childhood, “with less time for scrolling and more time for play.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer argued that the ban is essential to protect children: “this is a line in the sand. Tech giants had their chance and failed, but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.”

The ban is not unpopular with the British public. YouGov found that 77% of parents support a ban on social media for under-16s, 82% of parents believe that social media use has a negative impact on children, and 88% of parents say social media companies need to be doing more to protect children. Among young people (16-29), the John Smith Centre found that 62% agreed that social media should be banned for children under the age of 16, citing risks of disinformation and sensitive content. It is clear that Brits want to see greater protections for children on social media. However, it is crucial that we zoom out and examine the greater implications of this ban.

There are definitely positives of the new policy. First, it would protect children from online harms, such as cyber bullying and radicalisation. Cyberbullying is a widespread phenomenon in UK schools; the TES Safeguarding report (2025) notes that 66% of school staff and governors across the UK cited cyberbullying as the most common online safeguarding issue. The removal of access to social media should, in theory, lead to a decline in cyberbullying among under-16s, however messaging services like WhatsApp will not be included in the ban, so the possibility of cyberbullying through messaging applications remains.

Moreover, this ban has potential to decrease online radicalisation and the accessibility of extremist content. Children aged 11-15 in England and Wales made up the largest group of Prevent referrals in the year ending March 2025, accounting for 36%. Mølmen and Ravndal (2023) found that the internet makes extreme ideology readily accessible and lends it legitimacy by ‘echoing’ extreme viewpoints, which gradually cultivates entrenched worldviews.

However, extremists often use lesser-known platforms rather than mainstream social media platforms. This is because mainstream platforms censor extremist ideologies. This has led to the emergence of ‘alternative social media’ platforms such as Telegram, which do not enforce extensive content removal. Importantly, [de-platforming has been found to have a limited effect on decreasing extremist content online, extremists instead move to a different space](https://pt.icct.nl/article/us-extremism-telegram-fueling-disinformation-conspiracy-theories-and-accelerationism?). This poses the question of how, and whether, the government can realistically moderate these spaces.

There are some clear drawbacks. The ban risks isolating young people in minority communities, such as LGBTQ+ youth, who often rely on these online spaces for support and connection they may not find offline. A 2021 report by the University of Sussex and the sexual health charity Brook described queer online spaces as “a vital space of LGBT+ community and ‘queer world-making’”. The report found that young people often find it easier to meet others they relate to online than offline, particularly those who have not yet come out or lack safe spaces in their local community, and that for those who are isolated, disabled, or living rurally, an online community can be lifesaving. Therefore, a ban risks cutting off a crucial source of belonging for those who need it most.

The ban would also remove one of the main ways under-16s engage with politics and develop a sense of their own political identity. The John Smith Centre found that 61% of 16–29-year-olds use social media platforms to stay informed about news and current events. Among these, TikTok is the most popular, with 69% of participants stating they use it regularly to stay informed. Nevertheless, their reliance on social media carries significant risk as it is a notoriously fertile ground for disinformation and misinformation, and young people drawing their news primarily from these platforms may be exposed to a distorted picture of current events.

Yet a ban does little to solve this issue. Removing under-16s from these platforms does not teach them to navigate misinformation. Instead, it simply delays the encounter until they turn 16, arguably leaving them less equipped to deal with it. Our AI-saturated information landscape further complicates this, as greater digital literacy is needed to recognise misleading AI-generated content. Arguably, a more durable solution lies in strengthening digital and media literacy, so that young people can engage critically with what they see rather than being shut out of these spaces altogether.

There is also little evidence that restrictive measures work. In Australia, which introduced its own under-16 ban in December 2025, a study in the British Medical Journal found over 85% of under-16s were still accessing at least one restricted platform each week, with children simply using older people's accounts, fake accounts or private browsers to get around it. Neither was Britain’s Online Safety Act a success; the Molly Rose Foundation found exposure to harmful content has barely changed since the act came into force, with half of girls and a third of teenagers aged 13 to 17 seeing high-risk suicide, self-harm, and eating disorder content in a single week. If current rules are failing and a near-identical ban abroad has been so easily bypassed, it is hard to see how this measure will fare any differently.

Lastly, the ban will not only shape how under-16s use the internet, but how all Britons use it. To keep children off social media, the platforms will implement age verification methods such as submitting identity documents and face scans. We have seen these methods implemented last year, when the Online Safety Act forced platforms hosting pornography and other content deemed harmful to introduce age checks, meaning users had to prove their age before viewing it.

Extending this approach across mainstream social media raises real concerns. Ipsos data reveals that the public is split on submitting their passport or driver’s licence or using a photo or video of their face for age verification. It is a worrying thought that big tech could gather facial scans, biometric data, and other highly sensitive information from millions of users, data that these companies previously may not have had access to. As Taylor Lorenz of the Guardian notes, this kind of data could be used to build consumer profiles sold to advertisers or to train AI systems, and once harvested it can also be stolen by bad actors and weaponised for identity theft, blackmail or state surveillance.

The impulse behind this ban is understandable, and it has clear public backing. However, good intentions do not guarantee good policy. The evidence suggests this measure will be easily bypassed, will isolate vulnerable young people who depend on online communities, and could hand big tech the personal data of millions of Britons in the process. To avoid this, the government could take a different approach: they could hold big tech to account and regulate the algorithms that drive online harm and teach young people how to navigate the internet rather than locking them out of it.

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