UK to Ban Social Media for Under-16s Starting Spring 2027

Prime Minister Keir Starmer will ban social media for under-16s in the UK by Spring 2027, covering Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and X and pushing AI “romantic companion” chatbots to over-18s. The plan, announced Monday and backed by 9 in 10 parents who responded to a 116,000-person consultation, would make the UK the second country after Australia to impose a blanket age cut-off on the major platforms, with 16- and 17-year-olds also seeing livestreaming and stranger-contact features switched off by default.

Ministers hope to bring the first regulations to Parliament before Christmas. The ban will be enforced under powers created by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, and the consultation that backed it drew more responses than almost any in this government’s memory. The losers in the frame are clearer than the winners: the platforms lose a captive teenage audience, current under-16 users lose their accounts, and Ofcom absorbs the job of building a working age-assurance system that Australia’s six-month-old law has not yet proven out.

What the Government Just Announced

Starmer set out the policy in Downing Street on 15 June 2026, and the government’s announcement of the under-16 social media ban names the platforms the rules will hit. Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X are all in. WhatsApp and Signal are out, on the grounds that the ban is aimed at user-to-user platforms built around social interaction, posts and recommendation algorithms, not messaging.

Music streaming, e-commerce platforms and educational services are also excluded. The Guardian’s write-up of the announcement lists YouTube Kids, Lego Play, Google Classroom and Pinterest among the narrowly defined exemptions, with a fuller list to be published in July when the government’s full response to the consultation lands. The exemption framework exists to keep the ban from pulling in services that are not, in the regulator’s words, social media.

Beyond the social media ban, the package pulls AI “romantic companion” chatbots, products designed to simulate sexual relationships or roleplay with users, into an 18-plus minimum age, with similar intimate functionalities restricted for under-18s across AI chatbots more widely. Livestreaming by under-16s and the ability for unknown adults to contact children will be blocked on a wider range of online services, including gaming sites, with those restrictions on by default for 16- and 17-year-olds to prevent a cliff-edge at 16. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, framing the package, said the measures would “take power away from the tech giants, who have had countless opportunities to keep children safe,” and warned that “today’s announcement is not ‘one and done’ or the end of the story.” Overnight curfews and breaks on infinite scrolling for under-18s are still under consideration and will be set out in July.

The Mandate Behind the Ban

More than 116,000 people responded to the “Growing up in the online world” consultation over three months, and the headline numbers pulled in one direction. Nine in 10 parents who took part said they would support a social media ban for children under 16, and more than 83% said the benefits of social media were outweighed by the risks. Two-thirds of children and young people agreed that under-16s should not be allowed to use at least some social media platforms.

That backing crosses the political aisle inside Labour. More than 60 Labour MPs wrote to Starmer in January 2026 urging him to back a ban. Labour MP for Edinburgh South Ian Murray, writing in support of the package, called it “a big but necessary step” and said the priority was the next wave of children “who have not yet adopted social media.” The current UK age floor for major platforms sits at 13, a limit enforced loosely, and ministers argue the new threshold is a generational reset rather than a tightening of the existing rule.

• 116,000 responses submitted to the consultation
• 9 in 10 parents backed an under-16 social media ban
• More than 83% of parents said the benefits of social media were outweighed by the risks
• Two-thirds of children and young people agreed under-16s should be blocked from at least some social media platforms
• 13 is the current age floor for major platforms in the UK

The Australian Blueprint

Australia took the world-first step on 10 December 2025, and the UK is now using the same model. Under Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, the country’s eSafety Commissioner oversees age-based restrictions on 10 of the largest platforms, and fines of up to A$49.5 million (€30.2 million) can be imposed on social media companies for serious or repeated breaches.

The UK’s announcement borrows the architecture and extends it. Ministers call the package “Australia plus”: same age cut-off, same user-to-user scope, with the additional UK-only layer of 16- and 17-year-old default-on restrictions, a wider set of services caught by the livestreaming and stranger-communication rules, and the AI chatbot age limit. Australia’s record after six months is mixed, and the comparison matters. A March 2026 survey of 1,050 Australian teens aged 12 to 15 by the Molly Rose Foundation found that 61% of those who had accounts on restricted platforms before the ban still had access to at least one platform, often through workarounds, parents’ credentials or virtual private networks. Jon Crowcroft, a communications systems professor at the University of Cambridge, told Euronews there is “a real risk this will drive some users to worse sites, and policing devices is close to impossible technically.” Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has opened five investigations into alleged non-compliance, and two High Court challenges to the Australian law are pending.

Other countries are moving in parallel. Canada introduced Bill C-34, also known as the Safe Social Media Act or the Digital Safety Act, on 10 June 2026, with penalties of 3% of global revenue or C$10 million, whichever is more. Malaysia began enforcing its under-16 social media ban on 1 June 2026, with mandatory ID checks via MyKad or the national digital ID app. The UK, Australia, Canada and Malaysia now form the most concrete end of a global trend, with France, Spain, Denmark and South Korea still studying their options.

For a closer look at how Australia’s ban has tracked on teen mental health, see how Australia’s under-16 ban has tracked on teen mental health. For the structure of Canada’s parallel bill, see Canada’s parallel under-16 social media bill.

How the Age Cut-Off Will Be Enforced

Ofcom, the communications regulator, is being asked to do the heavy lifting. The Secretary of State has asked the Ofcom Chair and CEO to conduct a rapid study on what counts as effective age assurance for verifying that a user is over 16, with a report due by October 2026. The study will look at facial age estimation, bank information, email-based age signals and digital IDs, the same methods already used for highly effective age assurance under the existing Online Safety Act for under-18s accessing pornography and other harmful content.

The legal machinery is already in place. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 and the Crime and Policing Act 2026 both received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026, and they create the delegated powers ministers will use to bring in the first regulations by the end of the year. The CPA also brings AI chatbot services within scope of the Online Safety Act’s illegal content duties, introduces new offences for nudification tools and adds a 48-hour takedown and de-indexing regime for non-consensual intimate images. Existing priority offences now include cyberflashing and content that encourages or assists serious self-harm, both upgraded in December 2025, with the cyberflashing priority offence coming into force on 8 January 2026.

The week before the social media announcement, on 8 June 2026 at London Tech Week, Starmer set a separate, harder deadline for the device makers. Tech companies have three months to activate built-in features or implement technical solutions that detect and block nude images for children across all apps and services on the device, by default, and without collecting data or threatening privacy. If they do not act, the government will legislate, with potential fines for companies and the possibility of criminal liability for technology executives held out as a “last resort,” according to the legal framework powering the new UK online safety measures.

1. October 2026: Ofcom publishes its rapid study on effective age assurance for verifying 16+.
2. Before Christmas 2026: first regulations laid before Parliament under powers created by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026.
3. By 8 September 2026: tech companies must implement device-level nude image blocking or face legislation with fines and possible executive criminal liability.
4. Spring 2027: first set of regulations takes effect, with the ban on social media for under-16s operational.

The Platforms Push Back

YouTube, owned by Google, was the most pointed. “Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less safe services,” a spokesperson said, according to the BBC’s reporting on platform and commissioner reactions to the ban. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said a ban risked “isolating teens from online communities and information, and driving them to unregulated alternatives.”

Snapchat said it “shared the objective of online safety, but disagreed with a full ban.” TikTok was more emollient, saying it would “examine the details of the government’s measures, and we look forward to collaborating constructively with the government on this important issue.” X did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment. The pushback has a consistent shape: platforms do not deny the harms, they argue that the chosen instrument is the wrong one.

Inside the UK, the response split. Joe Ryrie, co-founder of the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign, called the package “a major step forward” and said millions of children would now “get a few more years to grow up before entering online environments that were never designed with their wellbeing in mind.” Esther Ghey, whose daughter Brianna was killed in 2023, told BBC Breakfast she was “so glad now that this announcement has been made” and said the ban could “potentially save so many children’s lives.” From across the Atlantic, Mark Lanier, the US litigator who won a landmark trial against Meta and YouTube earlier in 2026, said the UK ban was “a step in the right direction.” The US Mission to the UK, in a statement dated 5 June, said it had “concerns about regulations that impose disproportionate compliance burdens on American companies or that apply to one platform but not similar services,” and the Trump administration has signalled it prefers “healthy options” such as chronological feeds over algorithmic ones.

The Critics Holding Back

Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, called the package “a positive response to what children have been telling me” in a statement published on 16 June 2026, but her office has been clear that the ban’s protective effect stops at 16. She wants it extended to under-18s for any service that uses harmful features. “These measures will only be as strong as their enforcement, which I will be watching closely,” she said.

The other UK children’s commissioners were cooler. Rocio Cifuentes, the children’s commissioner for Wales, said a ban was “too simplistic a framing” and that accountability should have sat with the platforms. Nicola Killean, her Scottish counterpart, said the ban was not a “proportionate, effective, or enforceable way to protect children’s rights.” Chris Quinn, the Northern Ireland commissioner, said the ban “risks letting technology companies off the hook.” The split, four commissioners for four parts of the UK with three of them publicly skeptical, is the kind of internal critique ministers will not be able to wave away.

Reform UK has vowed to “rip up the Online Safety Act,” the landmark law that Murray argues “has done much to make the online world safer for children.” The party has previously called the Act “borderline dystopian” and said it would “make Xi Jinping blush.” Murray, in defence of the package, frames the choice as one between platforms and families, and argues the driving principle “must be to protect children and young people.” The Molly Rose Foundation, an online safety charity set up by the family of a British teenager who took her own life after viewing harmful social media content, has warned that the ban will give parents a “false sense of safety” unless the algorithmic feeds that push harmful content to children are tackled at the same time. With Australia’s six-month compliance record and three of the four UK children’s commissioners publicly doubtful, the policy’s strongest defenders and its strongest critics are now both pointing at the same gap: enforcement.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the UK social media ban for under-16s start?

The UK government plans to bring the first regulations to Parliament before Christmas 2026, with the ban on social media for under-16s expected to come into force in Spring 2027. Ministers are using delegated powers created by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026, so the first set of rules can be brought in by secondary legislation rather than a new Act of Parliament.

Which apps does the UK social media ban cover?

Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X are all in. WhatsApp, Signal, YouTube Kids, Lego Play, Google Classroom and Pinterest are exempt. The scope is set to capture user-to-user platforms whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allow users to post material, alongside algorithms. A fuller list of exemptions, including any music streaming and e-commerce carve-outs, will be published in July 2026.

Will AI chatbots be restricted under the UK social media ban?

Yes, but as a separate measure. So-called AI “romantic companion” chatbots, products designed to simulate sexual relationships or roleplay with users, will have to enforce a minimum age of 18. Similar intimate functionalities will be restricted for under-18s on AI chatbots more widely. The enforcement powers for AI chatbot services were created by the Crime and Policing Act 2026, which inserts a delegated power to amend the Online Safety Act to bring AI chatbot services within scope of its illegal content duties.

How will the UK enforce the social media ban?

Ofcom, the communications regulator, is being asked to do most of the operational work. The Secretary of State has asked Ofcom to conduct a rapid study on effective age assurance for verifying whether a user is over 16, with a report due by October 2026. The study will examine facial age estimation, bank information, email-based age signals and digital IDs. Separately, tech companies have a three-month deadline, set on 8 June 2026, to implement device-level nude image blocking for children, with the government holding out the threat of legislation, fines and possible criminal liability for technology executives as a last resort.

Is the UK social media ban different from Australia’s?

Yes. The UK is using Australia’s model, banning under-16s from user-to-user social media platforms, but adding an “Australia plus” layer. The UK package also applies livestreaming and stranger-contact restrictions to a wider range of services, including gaming platforms, turns those restrictions on by default for 16- and 17-year-olds, restricts AI “romantic companion” chatbots to over-18s, and is considering overnight curfews and infinite scroll breaks for under-18s. Australia has been enforcing its ban since 10 December 2025, and a March 2026 survey of 1,050 teens aged 12 to 15 by the Molly Rose Foundation found that 61% of those with pre-ban accounts still had access to at least one platform, a compliance gap the UK government says it is trying to close.