Children are set to be barred from accessing many major platforms

A social media ban for under-16s is set to be announced tomorrow. Sir Keir Starmer is expected to set out plans to bar children from certain platforms on Monday.

The Prime Minister will go further than Australia by including chatbots and imposing a curfew for older teenagers in a bid to end late-night scrolling, it has been reported.

The UK will follow Australia’s example in raising the minimum age to 16 for sites including TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X, YouTube, Snapchat and Reddit, according to The Sunday Times.

Click here for the latest on Greater Manchester's politics in our newsletter

The newspaper reported that restrictions will also be placed on romantic or sexual AI chatbots, while daily social media use will be limited for under-18s.

Appearing on TV this morning, the Culture Secretary and Wigan MP Lisa Nandy said a ban on its own was not a 'silver bullet solution', but should be part of a 'basket of measures' to protect children online

She declined to pre-empt Sir Keir’s announcement, but said the government’s consultation was launched with 'a question of how we better protect young people online, not if we do so.'

“The responses to the consultation were overwhelmingly clear", she told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Not everybody wanted to see a social media ban for under-16s, but the vast majority of people who responded did.

“That came through not just from parents and from campaigners, it did also come through from many young people themselves who are feeling that they’re being pulled into something quite toxic at a very young age.”

The government’s consultation received about 116,000 responses, making it the second-largest government consultation in history after a consultation on equal marriage in 2012.

The minister said Australia’s experience showed that while a ban would not prevent all young people from accessing social media platforms, it could help shift the culture by changing the expectation that children as young as eight, nine, 10 and 11, who were 'not really emotionally equipped to be able to cope with it', should be online simply because all of their friends were.

“I don’t think banning social media on its own is the silver bullet solution, but I do think Australia has shown very clearly that it has a significant role to play,” Ms Nandy said, adding that it should be part of a 'basket of measures.'

She signalled there could be more stringent age checks than in Australia, where there have been concerns that some under-16s have bypassed the ban imposed in December by using virtual private networks (VPNs) or creating accounts with fake dates of birth.

Polling published in April found three in five Australian children aged between 12 and 15 still have access to one or more online account which should have been restricted as a result of the law.

Ms Nandy told Ms Kuenssberg: “The experience in Australia showed part of the reason why it has been difficult for them to enforce it is because there weren’t very tough age verification measures. That’s one of the things that we’re looking at and the Prime Minister will say more about tomorrow.”

'Today’s children are growing up under constant scrutiny'

Meanwhile, a survey found that one in seven adults trust Government ministers to decide which social media platforms are appropriate for children, with more expressing confidence in parents, regulators and schools.

An Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) survey of more than 2,000 adults, carried out over Wednesday and Thursday, found 51% trust parents to decide which platforms are appropriate, 49% trust an independent regulator, 22% trust schools, 16% trust technology companies and 15% trust Government ministers.

The polling, conducted by YouGov, also found 44% support banning under-16s from social media while 39% prefer tighter regulation.

Just over one in 10 participants said social media should not be banned or more strictly regulated.

Exposure to age-inappropriate content such as nudity, exposure to strangers and algorithms learning user behaviour and recommending content, were among the harmful features highlighted.

The IPPR is calling for a blanket ban on social media for under-16s, but not just to protect children from harmful content. Avnee Morjaria, associate director at the IPPR and a former teacher, said: “More and more of children’s lives are now lived through screens. Previous generations had the freedom to make mistakes, experiment and move on.

“Today’s children are growing up under constant scrutiny, where every insecurity can be amplified and every mistake permanently recorded.

“A blanket social media ban for under-16s is the only effective option. Not because technology is inherently bad, but because we are allowing childhood itself to be shaped for the worse by algorithms.

“Childhood should be defined by real-world experiences, friendships and opportunities to grow, not by an endless competition for attention and approval. The greatest loss of the smartphone age is not privacy; it’s childhood itself.”

The National Education Union (NEU) has also called on the Prime Minister to enact a ban. Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said: “The public backs action, parents have spoken, and the evidence is overwhelming. Anything less than a full ban would mean caving in to Big Tech.”

But some groups have said that a ban may not be the appropriate instrument to tackle a wide spread of social media harms.

The Molly Rose Foundation, set up in memory of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing harmful content online, has said an Australia-style ban might offer only 'the perception of security.'

The Children’s Coalition for Online Safety, led by the 5Rights Foundation and including groups such as the NSPCC and Girlguiding, has also demanded a broader overhaul of technology companies’ business models and product design choices that risk keeping young users hooked.