How could a UK social media ban for under-16s work?

Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to enforce a crackdown on children under the age of 16 using smartphones in the UK within months.

The prime minister is meeting parents and young people on Monday to insist that the government will do all it can to keep children safe online.

A consultation into new social media protections will launch in March and be guided by what parents and children say they want to see.

Ahead of setting out the new plans to prevent harms, Sir Keir warned that no online platform will get a “free pass” when it comes to children’s safety on the internet.

He added: “Technology is moving really fast, and the law has got to keep up. With my government, Britain will be a leader, not a follower, when it comes to online safety.”

But what is actually being proposed by the government? We take a look at the possibilities below.

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What online safety measures might the government introduce for children

The government plans to consult on banning children from social media, and restricting features such as infinite scrolling.

Children could also be prevented from using virtual private networks (VPNs) to illicitly access pornography, and limited from speaking with online chatbots under the proposals being floated by the prime minister.

The government is vowing to close legal loopholes that have allowed chatbots to create deepfake nude images, and is planning further curbs on social media.

This follows the war of words between ministers and Elon Musk earlier this year, after his Grok AI chatbot – embedded into the social media site X – amid concerns it was being used to make fake nude images of women and sexualised images children.

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How and when could the proposals come into force

The consultation into new social media protections will launch in March.

Ministers are taking steps now to bring in powers that mean they can act swiftly and respond to its results within months.

Before that, they will act now to close a legal loophole and force all AI chatbot providers to abide by the Online Safety Act or face the consequences of breaking the law.

Ministers also plan to introduce powers through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to speedily change the law in reactions to changing online behaviours.

Elsewhere, amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill will be used to ensure chatbots protect users from illegal content.

What could a social media ban for under-16s look like in the UK including what could be banned

While no concrete details for an under-16s social media ban have been confirmed in the UK, Australia, which introduced one last year, can be viewed as a possible template.

Australia started enforcing a world-first prohibition on social media for children under 16 in December, requiring 10 of the largest platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X/Twitter, to lock out young users or face fines of up to A$49.5m (£26.5m), making it one of the world’s toughest digital restrictions.

The ban was expected to affect over a million accounts.

Platforms said they would use a combination of tools – like behaviour analysis to estimate user age – and age estimation technologies involving selfies to enforce the ban. They may also require identification documents or linked bank details to verify a user’s age.

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What criticism has an under-16s social media ban faced

While Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese insisted that his country had shown the world that online harms did not need to be accepted as an inevitable feature of modern childhood, many young social media users were dismayed at the prospect of being locked out of the platforms. In the hours before the new law came into force, many posted mournful public farewells. “No more social media,” one teenager said on TikTok, “no more contact with the rest of the world.”

The prohibition was welcomed by some parents’ groups and child safety advocates, but major technology companies and civil liberties organisations warned that it could compromise privacy, encourage children to lie about their age and push young people onto riskier platforms.

For social media firms, the implementation of the ban marked a new era of stagnation as user numbers flatline and time spent on platforms shrinks, studies show. Platforms say they earn little from advertising to under-16s but warn the ban disrupts a pipeline of future users.

Just before the ban took effect, 86 per cent of Australians aged eight to 15 used social media, the government said.

Tests by The Guardian showed that some platforms were still in the process of applying the restrictions in the hours after the ban was imposed, with accounts registered with the birth date of an under-16 continuing to be permitted.