{"id":495371,"date":"2026-03-25T23:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T23:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/495371\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T23:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T23:44:08","slug":"house-of-lords-again-supports-uk-social-media-ban-for-under-16s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/495371\/","title":{"rendered":"House of Lords again supports UK social media ban for under-16s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hours ahead of Wednesday’s debate in the Lords, the government also said social media bans, digital curfews and time limits on apps are to be trialled <\/a>in the homes of 300 UK teenagers. The pilots will last six weeks.<\/p>\n

Some campaigners and experts have offered their support for a ban, but others have warned the restrictions could be circumvented or push children to darker corners of the internet.<\/p>\n

Meta and Google have said the minimum age UK children can access social media should not be raised in response to questions from the science, innovation and technology committee on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Officials from TikTok and X told MPs that they remained “neutral” on the issue.<\/p>\n

MPs overturned the first attempt by peers to amend the bill earlier this month and are expected to do so again, due to the government’s large majority, when the proposed legislation returns to the House of Commons for further consideration.<\/p>\n

The bill is currently at the stage of its parliamentary journey known as “ping-pong”, where legislation moves between the Commons and Lords until agreement is reached on its final wording.<\/p>\n

Responding to the result, Conservative shadow education secretary Laura Trott said peers have “once again done the right thing” and urged Labour MPs to back a ban.<\/p>\n

During the debate on Wednesday, Lord Nash said he had been the director of technology companies in California and described “Californian techies” as “some of the most able, innovative, entrepreneurial, wealth and job-creating people in the world”.<\/p>\n

He told the Lords: “But in relation to that cavalier approach that they have taken to harmful content online for our children, I think they’ve gone way too far in prioritising their commercial instincts, and we need to act now in a way that is truly effective.”<\/p>\n

Lord Nash described the government’s consultation as “a shocker” and he became emotional as he paid tribute to bereaved parents who campaigned for a change in the law following the deaths of their children.<\/p>\n

The former education minister, watched on by some of the families in the chamber, said: “I don’t want to be standing up here in six or 12 months banging the same old drum with even more bereaved parents in the gallery.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hours ahead of Wednesday’s debate in the Lords, the government also said social media bans, digital curfews and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-495371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}