U.K. to Ban Under-16s From Major Social-Media Platforms

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U.K. to Ban Under-16s From Major Social-Media Platforms

Britain says its ban, set to come into force next year, will go further than restrictions currently in place in Australia

By Max Colchester and Mauro Orru, WSJ

Updated June 15, 2026

The U.K. will force social-media companies to restrict access for teens under 16, including Snapchat and TikTok, starting early next year.

The U.K. said Monday it will force leading social-media companies to restrict access to their sites for teens under 16 years old, joining a growing list of countries to ban access to the platforms after an outcry by parents and campaigners.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the ban, which should come into force early next year, will include Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. Starmer said the U.K. government will also ban under 16s from livestreaming themselves on other platforms and curb the ability of strangers to send direct messages to under-16s. Messaging services WhatsApp and Signal won’t be included in the overall ban.

“This is a line in the sand,” Starmer said. “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.”

Renewed focus on child safety in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe comes months after Australia became the first country in the world to enact a social media ban for under-16s in December of last year, forcing social-media companies including Meta, TikTok owner ByteDance and YouTube to deactivate millions of teen social-media accounts.

Since then, several governments have weighed bans or introduced legislation to restrict social-media use as tech companies face growing pressure over claims they aren’t doing enough to protect younger users from harmful content and addictive algorithms.

Lawmakers across Europe, including France and Germany, have backed restrictions to social media access for young people. In Asia, Indonesia recently began restricting children under 16 from accessing certain platforms, while in the U.S., Florida is enforcing a ban on social-media use under the age of 14.

Starmer said the new rules went further than those implemented by Australia. The government said it was also looking into overnight curfews on social media and breaks in infinite scrolling for under-18s, with more detail on this expected in July. Other curbs are expected for under-18s on artificial-intelligence chatbots that can act as romantic companions when users ask them to simulate sexual relationships.

In the U.K., the ban has wide cross-party support and is supported by nearly eight in 10 parents, according to pollster YouGov.

Critics say the outright bans can be counterproductive, removing the onus on tech companies to develop features to stop criminal activity on their sites and pushing children to migrate to less well-regulated platforms to communicate instead. It is also easy to side step restrictions by using a virtual private network to access sites anonymously, or to communicate via online multiplayer games which aren’t covered by the ban.

Following Australia’s ban, surveys found that some seven in 10 under 16s who had a social-media account before the 2025 ban still had one as of February.

A YouTube spokesperson said it had invested in age-appropriate experiences and protections for teens for over a decade and that blanket bans pushed children out of supervised platforms and toward anonymous, less-safe services. TikTok, Meta Platforms, Snapchat and X didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“If high-quality evidence showed that a ban substantially reduced self-harm, depression, exploitation and cyberbullying, I would support it,” said Dennis Ougrin, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Queen Mary University of London. “But as a clinician and researcher, I think major policies affecting millions of young people should be driven by evidence, and we do not yet have that evidence.”

Starmer, however, said that the new rules weren’t just about banning social media for those who currently use it but also to ensure future generations are weaned off what he called highly addictive platforms. “Laws are rules, but they’re also an expression of our values. They shape the social contract, and so this will change the conversations that parents have and the expectations of children over time,” he said.

The government didn’t say how the ban would be enforced or how the country’s communications regulator would ensure that appropriate age-verification tools are used. The government said regulators will outline more details by the end of the year.

Following a spate of suicides by teens after using chatbots, several AI companies already ban or place additional safety restrictions on users under 18. Character.AI banned minors from accessing its open-ended chats and settling lawsuits from families of teenagers who had killed or harmed themselves after interacting with its chatbot.

Last week, the U.K. government also said it would force companies to implement technology that would block children from sending nude images of themselves. Tech companies have three months to implement the changes or the government said it would pass legislation to force them to. The government has also announced that smartphones will be banned in state-run schools.