UK government ‘would consider’ Australia-style social media ban for under-16s
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lisa-nandy-starmer-social-media-youth-plan-b2881684.html
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
UK government ‘would consider’ Australia-style social media ban for under-16s
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lisa-nandy-starmer-social-media-youth-plan-b2881684.html
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
46 Comments
I mean of course they would, what wouldn’t this country ban at this point?
UK government ‘would consider’ making adults show their ID or scan their face in order to use social media.
Get in the bin, this kind of authoritarian bullshit needs to die. Australia’s ban is already a complete mess same as the OSA over here. It isn’t worth the billions in tax money that our govt would inevitably spend.
Labour speed running becoming as unpopular as possible
I don’t have children.
I think social media is one of the great curses of the modern age, and is harmful to children.
Implementing this wouldn’t affect me at all.
Nonetheless: Fuck. This. Shit.
This government can go to hell with their authoritarian bullshit
Edit: Responders are right, this likely *would* affect me in ways I didn’t initially consider. Nonetheless, even if it didn’t I’d still be against it on principle alone.
These laws are just as effective as the ‘war on drugs’….
I hate to agree with these clowns but a ban on social media for under 16s is a good idea.
How about fine the fuck out of social media platforms for even allowing dangerous content on their sites/apps?
While I agree kids should not be on these sites, equally this isnt a proper solution at all
Of course they would. They salivate at the idea of mass surveillance and the destruction of privacy.
They already take adults ID to access adult content, may as well take it from kids as well.
Throw in some digital ID and now they control every single aspect of your life.
You will have no privacy and be happy.
I mean, this is a good thing. Young people should 100% not be on social media.
So kids will use VPNs, fake ID, AI or underground/non-compliant sites to circumvent.
Social media can be shit, but banning it strikes me as an authoritarian government wanting to control the narrative and preventing any dissenting opinions or criticism.
It’s interesting that quite a few comments on here seem to be supporting this potential social media ban, but they hate the Online Safety Act and I fail to see how there’s much difference between the two?
I’ll say the same thing that I said about the OSA: The government have more important things to do than parent your kids for you; do you want Keir Starmer to pick your kids up from school or Rachel Reeves to help with their homework, too?
Whatever happened to liberalism? Really! Social media for under 16s is so dangerous that it needs to be compulsorily removed for each and every under 16? How ludicrous and immediately fascist is this automatic thinking? So, rather than do the harder requirements such as on-board greater levels of education and awareness just simply remove the privilege. This is abrogation of duty by the State.
Government: we’re going to let 16 year olds vote
Government: but they can’t use social media to come of age before they vote
Government: because they might get views on foreign and domestic policy that are different to our neolib consensus
Government: they can sign up to the army though
Government: just not question why they’re out there for
Government: or connect with anyone because there’s no third spaces IRL anymore
Government: the algorithm and porn made them depressed, not the lack of social options in their town and stressed environments from the precarious work their parents have.
Government: we’ll just keep telling Netflix to show them adolescence over and over again instead
Honestly, my only real qualms with this are that banning social media is truly a double edged sword. On the one hand, restricting access will help to improve mental health and wellbeing of not just young people, but also adults for whom the barrier to entry will cause to potentially not bother with the platforms, social media can be a very useful tool for those in marginalised/minority groups in being able to have an online community where in person may not be possible.
effectively this should already exist for under 13s. Unfortunately there are many parents who don’t control and monitor what their children do on the internet and for some reason they give them smart phones and tablets etc to keep them occupied rather than other activities. Equally parents can control what their children access on these devices easily if they could be bothered to set up their accounts properly and use their router settings. The government doesn’t need to do these things the parents should be.
How would this actually work though? As someone that’s over 16, does that mean I’m having to upload ID, or a pic of my face to reddit, etc?
How about just actually regulating the SM platforms properly with regard to bots / disinfo / impersonation… surely the fact they think they can say SM is a dangerous place for under 16s kinda highlights it’s actually unhealthy to society. Regulate the platforms rather than ban the most vulnerable from using them
The single biggest advertisement for this policy is the fact of the very founders of these platforms declaring they would not let their own children on Social Media.
Regardless of how shit Labour have handled many things, they absolutely should get this done once and for all.
The damage social media can do to young minds is staggering and, like other net-negative things such as smoking and alcohol, it should have an age gate.
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What possible argument can their be against *trying* to give children their childhood back? To be outside of the toxic hellscape of social media?
Waiting for social media companies to act has been a dead end for years.
UK government would consider pre-approved mobile phones like NK
How long do we have to watch the sheer weight of overwhelming evidence about the intensity and scale of damage that social media is doing to the brain development of children before we finally act?
There’s already at least one generation of children essentially being made intellectually and emotionally disabled by this stuff, probably permanently.
The ‘freedom’ of adults to rot their own brains by making these sorts of choices for themselves is not a good enough reason to override the imperative to secure our children’s future.
That said: it’s incredibly inconsistent to argue they’re old enough to be trusted to vote responsibly at the age of 16 but also that they can’t smoke a cigarette or use Instagram. I’d argue they shouldn’t be allowed to do any of the above, but Labour aren’t consistent on this.
making 16 year olds be able to vote in the next election (3 years away) and then pissing off the current 13-15 year olds, who will be able to vote next election, is quite possibly the stupidest thing i’ve ever heard
I’m not against regulating social media but why not regulate the problematic parts of it in a targeted way? I remember when your feed was just posts from people you followed in chronological order, none of that algorithmic outrage bait nonsense from people you didn’t even know or followed. Let’s require social media to return to that instead
In theory, I’ve not got a problem with it. Social media is doing a lot of harm to young people, and I’d argue a lot of adults as well.
In practice, it’s too restrictive and effects many other areas, removes anonymity etc. It’s easy for governments to exploit.
Yeah do it. This is probably a smart move.
In fact get rid of it for everyone. It’s a cancer on the world
Good. Real ID social media access please.
Foreign influence. Bots. Etc. Are weapons used against us. We need to fight back.
Makes voting age 16
Does everything in there power to make 16 year olds hate them
What is this strategy called?
Also vpns exist
The U.K. government should just get in with it, and do it! To not do so is to sell out our youth of today and our society of tomorrow IMHO!
Correction: They would consider banning *mainstream* social media for under-16s. Banning under-16s from Meta, X, Reddit or whatever else is dangerous because it will drive them to the fringes of the internet that the government is unaware of or can’t reach. This will just drive under-16s to more risky and dangerous parts of the internet. The parts that leave children more vulnerable to predators or extremely hateful rhetoric.
Did no one learn anything from the prohibition? Banning things that people want will likely drive them to go around the system, except now it’s unregulated and unmoderated. Mainstream social media needs to step up their game as their safety and moderation absolutely sucks but it’s better than nothing. The government needs to encourage parents to parent rather than lock down our freedoms.
I understand that people don’t like the idea of the government basically telling them how to live their life, and I understand why it’s perceived this way. Especially after this digital ID nonsense.
But can anyone really say this is truly a bad idea? Potentially impossible to implement sure, but social media is literally cancer to society lol and clearly parents(even the ones who grew up with social media themselves!) are unable to personally moderate what their children are doing online.
Admittedly this gets increasingly more difficult with age especially that 14-17 year old age but I know in my heart that the kids would be better off without Facebook Instagram and X, and I’d actually welcome an attempt to get them using it less.
Don’t need age verification
“Is your profile picture mostly chin or forehead?”
Boomer, clearly old enough
I think this really should be the other way around. Kids are precisely who should be using social media and rarely are the problem users.
I think if we banned adults from social media that would be far more effective.
You could easily tie logins to a school email etc.
Banning is the lazy way of dealing with an issue when educating will nearly always be a better option, and can be a transferrable skill to other things. Social media is a blight on society and on journalism, as it’s not about informing people but getting something out there first regardless of whether the facts have been checked.
Educating children on the dangers and issues around social media will be the better focus, and what the Labour Government should do is bring forward the changes to the curriculum around spotting fake news et al to September 2026 as a priority, and include how social media can be a force for good as well as bad, as we shouldn’t believe the first thing we see without checking the primary source and comparing it to the secondary source.
A lot of people read newspapers and social media as if they are the primary source of information, but often they are just a spin on it, regurgitated or from a particular point of view riddled with bias.
Same goes for adults – we have all seen people sharing AI generated non-sense believing them to be real. Start with children and hope they share with their parents and those older than themselves, and push out educational materials through PSAs, leaflets, police enforcement etc.
It’ll be hard work, but fruitful in the long run.
Of course it would. Censorship and restriction are the only ideas the UK Governments ever has in relation to the Web.
LGBT+ kids often find community online when they are unable to find it in person. This would just further endanger and isolate them, and leave them more vulnerable.
With the RSE guidance, the puberty blocker ban as well as this, it feels like active attempts to harm queer kids.
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What would be far better would be holding the social media companies to account to actually enforce their rules and follow the laws or risk bans.
The damage social media can do to people isn’t limited to children by any stretch of the imagination, so this is just fairly arbitrary rather than actually practical.
Of course they would. Then there’d be news articles about hundreds of thousands of 17/18 years old getting social media for the first time ever, claiming the removal of kids was the driving force when you guessed.. it’s the kids with VPNs again or some other such workaround d kids will think of in half a second.
and revoke the fucking god awful id checks instead
All countries should ban under 16’s from social media. Social media can be extremely toxic. If you are on the receiving end of trolling/bullying, it can be 100 times more vicious than in real life, and 24/7 rather than just during school hours. Social media also teaches young girls the wrong values, eg namely that if you want to be beautiful, you need to inflate your lips to 10 times the normal size, and draw on ridiculous eyebrows. You also need to pose with duck or fish lips that resemble a labia in waiting. There is a TON of depravity on social media. A lot of very trashy people are influencers. There are also predators about. It is not a good place for children. They need to socialise, and develop their self esteem OFFline.
The real question is if whoever is next in power will be bothered to reverse all the shit policies they’ve enacted or if we’ll just be stuck with them as the new norm.
there’s a lobby responsible for all of this nonesense.
I think it would be best to see how it plays out in Australia first but its probably not a bad idea. That being said all social media is not equal, things like Twitter and Reddit aren’t quite as damaging as TikTok and Instagram reels. Perhaps limits on how long young people can use an account per day would make more sense without forcing everyone to give their IDs to untrustworthy companies.
I think it’s fair to say social media has been a net negative for kids. Not sure how to solve it but good for the Aussies for attempting to.
I think in the future they will look back and think it is insane that social media was so unregulated. Like we look back now and everyone smoked or there was cocaine over the counter and stuff.
I truly believe it is incredibly harmful and has given far too much power away from the UK into the hands of American corporate and hostile foreign actors that leads to lower quality of life of those in the UK both in terms of direct affect and indirect affect.
I’m a big proponent of this move.
I’m for it. Social media is like alcohol and tobacco. Can be harmful when used by adults but potentially REALLY bad for children. Of course some kids will find ways round the ban but that’s irrelevant. Some kids find their way round the rules on alcohol and tobacco – but that isn’t an argument for making them easily available to children.
Social Media has become a radicalisation machine, and we’d do well to wean ourselves off it ourselves without government intervention.
This is actually a sensible idea. Social media is destroying teenagers’ mental health, especially girl’s.
Now, let’s see how they will implement it.