U.K. ‘Going Further’ Than Any Country

Speaking in Downing Street, the prime minister said the U.K. was “going further than any country in the world by banning social media for under-16s," putting in protections that would “give kids their childhood back.”

“This is a line in the sand,” said Starmer. “Tech giants had their chance and failed, but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.”

The fine detail of how the measures will be implemented is yet to be published, with the government promising more detail by July.

Much will boil down to how age verification is conducted. The U.K. has already introduced legislation that bans under-18s from visiting pornographic websites, but that legislation puts the onus on site owners to find a means of age verification that is robust and secure.

The government now says that the U.K.’s telecoms and broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, will “conduct a rapid study of what is effective age assurance for verifying whether someone is over 16.”

Some of the age verification services that are already in use in the U.K. and other parts of the world have been easily bypassed. For example, children have been found to use moving images of video game characters to fool age verification schemes that rely on facial recognition.

The U.K. government’s statement said it will “learn the lessons from Australia’s experience by introducing more highly effective age assurance", which will “make it far harder for children to bypass safeguards.”

An Age Compliance Update published by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner this March, three months after its ban came into effect, found that around seven out of ten parents said their child still had a social media account. It also found that almost five million child accounts had been removed or restricted on the social-media platforms.

Restrictions On Adults?

The U.K. government’s proposed curfews and restrictions on infinite scrolling for 16- and 17-year-olds are likely to prove the most controversial aspects of the new legislation.

The government introduced the Representations of the People Bill earlier this year, which paved the way to reducing the voting age to 16. The government’s stance now appears to be that 16-years-olds are mature enough to vote, but not mature enough to moderate their own social media usage.

Whether the current government gets to see through the legislation at all is also in doubt. Should Andy Burnham win a seat as an MP in this week’s Makerfield by-election, the prime minister is widely expected to face a leadership challenge that could bring an end to his two-year premiership.