{"id":737938,"date":"2026-06-15T11:15:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T11:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/737938\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T11:15:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T11:15:12","slug":"social-media-ban-uk-copies-australia-to-introduce-under-16-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/737938\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media ban: UK copies Australia to introduce under-16 restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The British government has become the latest to copy Australia<\/a>\u2019s social media<\/a> ban, saying it is going further than Canberra\u2019s efforts to protect children<\/a> online.<\/p>\n

UK<\/a> Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the ban on a range of social media apps today, joining a growing global movement to tighten online safety.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer leads a press conference to announce government action to protect children online.\u00a0Carlos Jasso\/ Pool Photo via AP<\/p>\n

Australia, Canada<\/a>, Brazil<\/a> and Indonesia<\/a> have introduced legislation or announced age-based restrictions or requirements for children\u2019s access to social media, while France<\/a>, Spain<\/a>, Denmark<\/a>, Thailand<\/a>, South Korea<\/a> and others are studying or developing similar measures.<\/p>\n

Starmer called the ban a \u201ca big moment for our country\u201d, declaring he was \u201cnot prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the UK\u2019s ban went further than Australia\u2019s, which bars under-16s from holding social media accounts and allows for multimillion-dollar fines for tech firms if they don\u2019t remove them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard first hand from families crying out for change and we will do right by them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re going further than any country in the world by banning social media for under-16s and putting wider protections in place to give kids their childhood back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a line in the sand. Tech giants had their chance and failed, but we\u2019re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Assorted<\/p>\n

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube, Kick, Twitch and Reddit are all included in Australia’s ban.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Like Australia\u2019s, the UK plan will block Snapchat, TikTok<\/a>, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X while exempting messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal.<\/p>\n

But it will also ban livestreaming and communication with strangers for children under 16, while investigating overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for under-18s.<\/p>\n

Chatbots designed to simulate sexual relationships or role play, along with those functions inside more general-purpose chatbots, will be made over-18 only.<\/p>\n

While the Albanese government\u2019s bold push for a ban was widely hailed by parents and several international governments as a positive step, many teens and experts have labelled it ineffective.<\/p>\n

About 70 per cent of Aussie teens who had social media before the ban was enforced still have access, according to an eSafety report<\/a>, and the watchdog reported no discernible drop in reports of online harm like cyberbullying and image-based abuse<\/a> from under-16s.<\/p>\n

More than 60 per cent of nine.com.au readers called the ban ineffective<\/a> in an exclusive<\/a> survey. <\/p>\n

About 70 per cent of teens said they backed the ban when it was introduced and fewer than 10 per cent changed their minds in the time since.<\/p>\n

The UK government said it would \u201clearn the lessons from Australia\u2019s experience\u201d, making it \u201charder for children to bypass safeguards\u201d by introducing \u201cmore highly effective age assurance measures to support compliance\u201d.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t detail those measures.<\/p>\n

Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in May that progress was being made but it took time to undo more than 20 years of social media entrenchment.<\/p>\n

\"eSafety<\/p>\n

Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said progress was being made.\u00a0Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n

eSafety is investigating potential non-compliance by five age-restricted platforms<\/a> \u2013 Snap, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube \u2013 and aims to decide any enforcement action soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The decision follows a public comment period in which the government got 116,000 responses from parents, the tech industry and children. <\/p>\n

The number of responses was second only to one seeking input about same-sex marriage<\/a> in 2012 and more than 90 per cent wanted an under-16 ban, the government said.<\/p>\n

Esther Ghey, whose 16-year-old daughter Brianna was killed in 2023 by two teenagers<\/a> who had accessed harmful content online, said the ban would \u201cpotentially save so many children\u2019s lives\u201d but had to be accompanied by other measures.<\/p>\n

Starmer said the government was \u201cconfident that this ban can be effective\u201d despite scepticism from some children\u2019s advocates.<\/p>\n

– Reported with Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British government has become the latest to copy Australia\u2019s social media ban, saying it is going further…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-737938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}