Starmer announces plan to ban under-16s from social media, seeks law before Christmas

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that the U.K. government will legislate to ban children under 16 from accessing social media, with regulations or a bill to be brought to Parliament before Christmas and the prohibition intended to take effect in spring 2027. Announcing the plan at a Downing Street press conference on June 15, Starmer said: “It is clear to me a full ban is the right choice.”

As currently outlined in reporting on the announcement, the proposed ban would cover major social platforms including X, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Messaging services would be excluded, with apps such as WhatsApp and Signal not covered. The government had not published a definitive list of services at the time of the announcement, leaving the final scope still to be defined.

That distinction is central: this is a government policy announcement, not a law already in force. The detailed legal text has not yet been published, so key questions — including how “social media” will be defined, exactly which services will fall within the rules and how age checks will work in practice — are still unresolved.

The social media ban was announced alongside a wider package of child-safety measures. The government said platforms will be required to block features that allow strangers to contact children, including on gaming and livestreaming platforms. It is also considering curfews and breaks from infinite scrolling, requiring safety defaults for under-17s, and restricting livestreaming for under-16s.

Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator that enforces online platform rules, said it will work with the government as the details are developed. In a statement Monday, it said: “So far, Ofcom has driven some of the strongest changes of any online safety regulation in the world... The Government has entrusted us to build on this progress with new measures to protect children, and we’re ready to work closely with them as the detailed regulations take shape.”

The regulator has also been given a specific timetable on one of the biggest unanswered issues: age assurance, the systems used to estimate or verify a user’s age online. In a June 15 letter to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Ofcom Chief Executive Dame Melanie Dawes said, “we will deliver an assessment that can be used to inform parliamentary debate by the end of October, as you have requested.” Ofcom said it will then publish a roadmap after the regulations are introduced to Parliament and a report on the ban’s impact within a year of implementation.

The policy follows the government consultation “Growing up in the online world,” which reporting said drew about 116,000 responses. The government has pointed to strong parental support for raising the minimum access age to 16. The move would build on the Online Safety Act 2023, the law that created the current framework for regulating online platforms and gave Ofcom enforcement powers, but it would go further by shifting from platform safety duties to an explicit age-based access ban.

That makes the proposal one of the most significant planned expansions of U.K. online child-safety regulation since the Online Safety Act. Under the existing framework, regulators can require platforms to reduce harmful content and risky design features. Starmer’s plan would add a more direct restriction: barring under-16s from the services themselves if they fall within the final definition.

The move has quickly drawn comparisons with Australia, where under-16 social media restrictions took effect in December 2025. For the U.K., however, the key questions are still ahead. Before the ban can take effect, ministers and Parliament will need to settle the legal definitions, decide the final list of covered services and determine what age-checking system platforms will be expected to use.