{"id":641707,"date":"2026-06-16T13:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T13:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/641707\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T13:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T13:57:09","slug":"five-big-questions-about-the-uks-under-16s-social-media-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/641707\/","title":{"rendered":"Five big questions about the UK’s under-16s social media ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

The government has only specified a handful of sites included in the UK’s social media ban,<\/p>\n

These are Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.<\/p>\n

However, it says its restrictions will closely follow Australia’s – where the above apps plus Kick, Reddit, Threads and Twitch are banned for under-16s.<\/p>\n

So where does that leave Roblox and gaming sites like it?<\/p>\n

Roblox is hugely popular with children in the UK, but it has been accused of failing to keep them safe – including allegations it allowed children to be preyed upon by adults<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Roblox says it has made changes to protect child users<\/a>, including by expanding tools to estimate a user’s age to determine the games and experiences they can access.<\/p>\n

“It is not yet clear how they will treat gaming sites,” says Lorna Woods, professor of internet law at Essex University.<\/p>\n

“Though if they follow the Australian approach, these will lie outside the Australian ban.”<\/p>\n

Regardless of whether it does end up being banned for under-16s, Roblox will still need to abide by requirements for all platforms to disable features that let strangers communicate with children, announced alongside the ban.<\/p>\n

The government made a point of saying this restriction would apply to gaming services.<\/p>\n

Children will still be able to participate in multiplayer online games, though, it adds, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government has only specified a handful of sites included in the UK’s social media ban, These are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-641707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641707","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=641707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}