The UK government will ban social media for anyone under 16, with the first rules expected in spring 2027.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the plan Monday, naming Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X as covered platforms; messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal are out of scope. Beyond the platform ban, the rules also block livestreaming and stranger-initiated contact for under-16s across any service, including gaming platforms. Those restrictions will be on by default for 16- and 17-year-olds as well, to prevent what the government called a "cliff-edge at 16." Romantic-companion chatbots must enforce a minimum age of 18, and AI chatbots broadly must restrict "intimate functionalities" for under-18s. Platforms will verify ages using methods borrowed from the UK's 2025 pornography law: photo ID matching, facial age estimation, open banking checks, and mobile network operator data.
The policy is politically popular — the government cites 90 percent of parents in favor — but some child-safety organizations have raised concerns about the approach, suggesting the consensus is narrower than that headline figure implies. The enforcement machinery is the real problem: every cited verification method carries known privacy tradeoffs, and Starmer himself acknowledged the rules will be "hard to legislate for, hard to regulate, hard to enforce."
Starmer said legislation should clear Parliament before Christmas — an ambitious timetable for a policy that, by his own admission, hasn't solved its hardest problems yet.