UK Brings in Full Social Media Ban for Under-16s

https://deadline.com/2026/06/uk-social-media-ban-under-16s-x-youtube-tiktok-reddit-1236956163/

by 01-_- • 1 month ago

47 103 1 month ago

anotherhue• 1 month ago

Feels heavy handed, but the brain-rot seems to be quite real, so I don't see a better option.

dryarzeg5• 1 month ago

The only thing that worries me here (although I'm not in UK; but if this practice will get adopted worldwide...) is how exactly the social media platforms will verify the age of their users. Pretty common worry these days, I guess, but I would rather not use any social media, including "needed" ones like LinkedIn, than give my passport to hell knows which third party or parties.

Oh yeah, and what about BlueSky, Mastodon and similar? Can they afford age verification? I'm pretty much sure they will be considered "a social media platforms" as well.

oneeyedpigeon4• 1 month ago

I'm in the UK; BlueSky already requires age verification for DMs, which I can no longer use.

philipwhiuk• 1 month ago

Mastodon instances will probably block the UK if they are asked to implement it.

s08148692• 1 month ago

Parents taking responsibility for what their children can see and do on their devices is an option. Maybe free classes for tech-illiterate parents?

There are options that don't involve forcing everybody to prove their age and provide ID verification to access social media

hugh-avherald• 1 month ago

Parents do not have infinite resources to 'take responsibility'. I do not think that is a practicable option, let alone a serious or optimal one.

shevy-java3• 1 month ago

There are options that don't involve forcing everybody to prove their age and provide ID verification to access social media

Indeed. Assuming this is the real goal. That would require of people to trust the government. I in general trust no government.

wallaBBB3• 1 month ago

Not when big tech is doing everything they can to bring harmful content to kids while pretending to sincerely offer guardrails.

Delphiza2• 1 month ago

What kind of class teaches 'tech-illiterate' parents to help their children not succumb to a multi-trillion dollar industry pushing out addictive and damaging content? It should be easy to develop such classes right? Maybe dust off the classes for 'health-illiterate' parents that were needed to stand up to the tobacco and alcohol industries? </s>

oneeyedpigeon4• 1 month ago

One 'better option' would be to hold parents more responsible for crimes that their children commit. And to broaden the types of abuse that the state can respond to—if parents let their children habitually drink alcohol to excess or smoke tobacco underage, social services tend to get involved.

Another 'better option' would be to prosecute tech companies that intentionally create addictive, harmful content.

Banning social media use for anyone unwilling to hand over their secure information to private third-parties seems like one of the 'worst options' to me.

9dev• 1 month ago

hold parents more responsible for crimes that their children commit.

Oh yeah, punishing children for mistakes they need to make to learn not to make them and moving responsibility from parents to the government sounds like a great idea.

pjc506• 1 month ago

A significant part of the brain rot involves full adults. Elon Musk is openly advocating riots in Northern Ireland; several people have been firebombed out of their houses.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/belfast-riot...

Targeting kids is a distraction from making the difficult choice of confronting powerful adults.

majorchord• 1 month ago

Musk wrote, “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!”

I'm certainly not defending the man, but that comment to me is definitely not plainly seen as "advocating riots"... I'd call that a very disingenuous stretch of the truth.

If we're going to criticize people, I think we need to do it for the right reasons.

m000• 1 month ago

It is heavy handed on the wrong side. How about heavy-handed regulation of the Social Media platforms? Not content regulation, but operations regulation. I'm pretty sure bots and ai-spam can be both easily flagged and banned, something that would have a positive impact for minors and adults alike. But the platforms won't do it, because these drive engagement and keep their stock value up.

Also, including the mid-teens (15-16) into the regulation may have a generational negative effect. This is the age you start to get interested in the world and how it works. Social Media is the primary medium teens use to get this information, having eclipsed traditional media (magazines, tv shows, radio shows etc.) Banning Social Media for these ages leaves a gap in newer generations maturing to adults.

But maybe that's by design? I.e. make new generations indifferent to the world around them, and also prevent them from building resistance to (home) propaganda spread through Social Media.

aledevv• 1 month ago

“Children will be given back their childhoods,”

As a parent, I completely agree. We need to protect children from the dangers of the completely uncontrolled "jungle" of social media. But above all, we need to give children back the right to experience a true, real childhood, made up of true friends, fresh air, friendships, and real relationships!

shevy-java3• 1 month ago

And that law ensures this? Really?

Reminds me of the prohibition era.

anonymars2• 1 month ago

Isn't there a drinking age?

budududuroiu5• 1 month ago

As a parent, I completely agree.

What's stopping you from doing this so far? Handing a child a smartphone is a decision parents can make, withholding access to a smartphone is also a decision parents can make.

hatefulmoron2• 1 month ago

I'm not in favor of these social media bans, but I would think the benefit here is that without the ban your child will be in the "real world" while everybody else's is on social media. This would make the "real world" socialization benefits more difficult.

n4r97• 1 month ago

Maybe they are already doing it. But they're allowed to want the same for others too.

Aardwolf• 1 month ago

Maybe they can't make real friends if all the others are engulfed in social media

postexitus• 1 month ago

Same argument goes for cigarette and alcohol. Withholding access to them is a decision a parent can make. Are you for allowing children to purchase them?

adityamwagh• 1 month ago

They will want a smartphone if their friends have it.

scandox• 1 month ago

Enormous, unrelenting social pressure? A crying child telling you that they're completely cut off from their peers and social group? Day after day of arguments and pleading? Schools and scout groups and extra-curriculars that tacitly require your child to have a Facebook or WhatsApp account? And much much more!

tokamak-teapot• 1 month ago

It sounds like you're assuming a few things: 1. Where you've written "smartphone", you're using this as a proxy for social media, which is what this legislation purports to target. 2. aledevv is a parent. 3. aledevv has, for whatever reason, not withheld access to social media (I'm taking "smartphone" as a proxy for "social media") for their child. 4. What aledevv said they agree with is state-level restrictions on social media for children.

Please correct me if any of the above is a misunderstanding.

If the above are representative, then what I believe you've overlooked here is a the much more difficult issue:

Parents have power over children, at least up to a point, and many platforms provide help with exercising that power. Apple and Google provide some means to restrict social media access which place control in the hands of parents.

Parents do not, normally, have power over other people's children. Parents can influence in-person social circles, somewhat, but without withdrawing children from all situations where they interact with other children, including school, social media's influence upon a parent's children is still very strong via the indirect route.

When a child goes to school, attends a group activity outside of school, or socialises in real life with friends outside of school, there are always children in the groups they meet who either use social media themselves or have older siblings, friends or parents who use social media themselves and who influence those children themselves.

To be clear, I'm not giving any opinion about what's proposed here by the UK government. I wanted only to object to what looks like an oversimplification that makes a false assumption that parents have a level of control and influence that they really don't.

zombot• 1 month ago

You don't have children, do you? Being a know-it-all in an area you know nothing about. Denying a phone to one child is to isolate them among their peers. Denying it to all makes them equal again.

christkv2• 1 month ago

Have you not discovered piehole or child controls? My kids stuff is completely locked down it was not hard. I don't need the state to be involved.

wallaBBB3• 1 month ago

Those are far from easy do handle for majority of parents.

Banks keeps sending me warnings about some new ‘Nigerian prince’ level scams. They wouldn’t be doing it if grownups weren’t falling for them.

General population doesn’t want to setup piholes.

dizzy3gg• 1 month ago

Locked down to what though? Bike rides and tag? I TRY to limit my child to 30 mins a day, but when she’s older there is gonna be peers that I will battling against.

stuaxo• 1 month ago

This could start if we became less worried about kids being kidnapped or whatever and actually let them out.

Kids have less freedom than ever.

j-bos• 1 month ago

Sir this the UK you're talking about.

znpy• 1 month ago

“Children will be given back their childhoods,”

On one hand, i agree fully.

On the other hand I'm worried about how controlling and orwellian/totalitarian the UK is becoming under Starmer.

richsouth2• 1 month ago

Because they're all going to go outside and skip and run and jump and skim stones rather than sitting in a darkened room playing Fortnite.

a13o• 1 month ago

According to one poll, 75% of them will, yes

https://wtop.com/lifestyle/2025/08/what-kids-say-it-would-ta...

thefz2• 1 month ago

Controversial, but I think that giving to everyone a computer connected to the internet - be it PDA-sized or any other form - was a mistake, and everything happened so fast that no one could control what was going on.

I say it was a mistake because for the generation grown with BBS and 14.4k modems the dangers of an open network were evident and real from the start, even if at the time they were minuscule in comparison to now. Those born with an always on, always connected device already in their hands lacked this awareness from the start.

shawabawa3• 1 month ago

Headline makes it sound like this has taken effect. It's just been announced

Might start taking effect in spring 2027

budududuroiu5• 1 month ago

Huge win for surveillance capitalism. If Agentic AI is the future of online interaction, shopping, etc., a signal of "this is a verified human being" is golden to advertisers.

cromka2• 1 month ago

It's also a huge win for children's future and cognition.

Both of these things can be true. We need to figure out how to navigate this new reality and no action was getting really dangerous.

budududuroiu5• 1 month ago

Parents have the choice of handing smartphones to their children. If cognition and future is that important, surely a parent wouldn't wait for government intervention

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm• 1 month ago

https://sinceyouarrived.world/taken

shevy-java3• 1 month ago

The mandatory age sniffing will soon start as well.

After all, the government wants to watch everyone, to verify your age now. Gone are the days of anonymity - they want to know your every move.

nickslaughter02• 1 month ago

...by ID checking everybody. Big Tech loves this.

Google Wants to Be the ID Checkpoint for Europe’s Internet

https://reclaimthenet.org/google-wants-to-be-the-id-checkpoi...

matthewmorgan• 1 month ago

I presume I'll be forced to dox myself for free to use those platforms?

EdiX2• 1 month ago

Of course, that's the whole point. Gotta prevent another Belfast.

pjc506• 1 month ago

Except this doesn't, because most of the rioters are adults.

In many of the previous riot/anti-immigrant violence cases, those arrested have substantial criminal records, which tends to lead to the "why is this person not in prison already?" discourse.

(look at how long the court system queues are some time. It can be years from offence to conviction!)

JuniperMesos• 1 month ago

If I was someone under the age of 16 in the UK I would absolutely attempt to circumvent this ban myself; and I'm happy to contribute to software that facilitates kids in the UK circumventing it.

lou1306• 1 month ago

Good. This will force kids to be creative, hack around, and question authority.

xracy2• 1 month ago

No, this will force the first person to be creative. Not even necessarily kids.

AltruisticGapHN• 1 month ago

YouTube seems a little much. Plenty of examples of bright kids who learn coding or electronics at a very young age, no doubt having access to YT is a big part of it.

Hmm I guess those kids would use their parents account or something like that.

kaelyx2• 1 month ago

This should be a parental decision, not a governmental one. UK parents are just offloading raising their kids.

roryirvine2• 1 month ago

Parents aren't responsible for the harms caused by social media services.

It's the operators who are responsible, and it's the operators who have the tools and resources available to reduce or mitigate those harms. So it is clearly they who should have taken action.

But they haven't, and so here we are.

kaelyx2• 1 month ago

The Ban for U16s is only going to push those who seek it out to darker areas with more risk. And for those who don't its only going to shift the current harm done onto those same children once they are old enough to then legitimately access theses services. Implementing the ban isn't going to fix a systematic failing of social media providers. This is the first step in a thinly veiled plan to re-implement the already unpopular UK Digital ID plan, under the guise of "protect our kids".

Delphiza2• 1 month ago

Social media platforms are offloading detection of harmful content and algorithms to UK parents.

ghusto3• 1 month ago

It should, but sadly most parents don't seem to be interested in parenting. This is the next best thing.

timbit42• 1 month ago

Then let Darwinism rule.

xracy2• 1 month ago

I think it's reasonable for governments to signal a decision like this that parents can ultimately choose to bypass. So it's both to explain the harms and posture to reduce those harms to children, and to leave the final decision to parents.

yanis_t• 1 month ago

I grown up in the 1990s, so as a teen I had access to the wild west of the decentralized internet in all its scary glory. It was pretty cool.

But nowadays as a parent I see, instagram, tiktok are much more scarier for the damage they make psychologically and mentally to our kids. And with the AI slop it's only going to go downhill. So yes, it's a great decision, and other countries should follow the lead.

r721• 1 month ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48527766

metalman• 1 month ago

ok, now guarantee that they get a library within walking distance, a bicycle a place to use it, and keep it, brick and mortor stores that have kids stuff for hobby and interest, parks, playgrounds, and police that call them "mam" and "sir", or, or, wait just keep them inside with an electronic monitoring device that cuts them off from there peers.

PUSH_AX• 1 month ago

Social media in it's current state is harmful. So I'm all for this.

richsouth2• 1 month ago

I'm guessing that as an adult I'm going to have to show my passport / drivers licence or something else to go on YouTube now? Stuff that.

guilhas2• 1 month ago

“Children will be given back their childhoods,”

Taking options away from children will not make their lives better just by itself

And this social media ban might only move the conversation to less transparent channels

WhatsApp and Telegram know more about children than their parents

And child can still spend all doing unhealthy stuff. YouTube kids is addictive enough, at home watching Netflix, playing video games, tablet/phone addictive games...

So the only real solution is force companies to provide better parental controls, maybe aided by AI

And force companies to add better controls/defaults for the population in general to reduce addictive features

ghusto3• 1 month ago

So the only real solution is force companies to provide better parental controls

Parental controls require parents. Many "parents" don't seem to be interested. So in my opinion the only real solution is to get parents to parent.

As an aside: > Taking options away from children will not make their lives better just by itself

As someone who grew up with fewer options, I disagree. It was precisely because I had so few options that I explored (both physically and mentally).

guilhas2• 1 month ago

Parents parenting is good. But there are no easy tools for them toto limit apps and websites on the device. And these companies provide very little help

Probably making fund to provide an alternative social media with vetted content for children, without addictive features like feed scrolling, and requiring in person friendships or school partnership, would probably go further to help than bans

As someone who grew up with fewer options, I disagree. It was precisely because I had so few options that I explored (both physically and mentally).

Can't see how having facebook banned but roblox, telegram groups, reddit, yt kids available will improve their mental health

But banning everything is also probably just as dumb

ChrisArchitect• 1 month ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48537709

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48527766

ghusto3• 1 month ago

So much ambivalence.

On the one hand: _Some_ kind of action is long overdue. For once "protect the children" is actually a valid argument (we should protect the adults too, but baby-steps ...).

On the other hand: Technical people can see this is going nowhere good.

remarkEon• 1 month ago

Ofcom, which has powers to enforce online safety regulation, will conduct a rapid study on what is effective age assurance for verifying whether someone is over 16, while it is being asked to publish a “clear enforcement strategy.”

Just so we’re all clear about what this particular social media ban is about. It’s about adults, and connecting a real name and face to online activity at the state-issued identification layer. I’m generally supportive of things like banning smartphones from schools, which is certainly an option the UK could’ve pursued, but this is coming at a time when social media is getting the blame for behavior of adults. Much easier to limit politically annoying voices of citizens when they have to authenticate through the state before logging in to speak.

Lio• 1 month ago

Digital ID by the backdoor is here.

Couldn't get it through the first or second times, just dress it up in "think of the children" rhetoric and run it from the Ofcom quango.

UK Brings in Full Social Media Ban for Under-16s

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