- The UK government's online safety consultation just ended
- This, and comments from officials, suggest we'll see new rules soon for under-16s
- A ban might not be coming, but some features could be restricted
The UK government is expected to announce some kind of social media crackdown for young people in the next few weeks — after Prime Minister Kier Starmer said on Tuesday he would act “very, very quickly” following a consultation with the public and with families; however, it’s being reported that it might not be a full ban for under-16s.
According to a report from The Times (behind a paywall), various experts and social media companies themselves are expecting a ban on addictive features, such as infinite scroll or video autoplay.
The logic here seems to be that in places where full-on social media bans are in effect (such as Australia), many under 16s have found ways to circumvent restrictions — or they’ve been pushed to less regulated online spaces that are either ignoring or haven’t been included in the ban. So instead of stopping access, you’d make the sites less addictive and safer by banning specific features.
Below, I’ve outlined the 8 measures and bans we might see implemented by the UK government. Other options are possible, though there are several that have been floated by online safety advocates, social media companies themselves, and those involved in UK politics — so I expect we’ll see some combination of these introduced when the UK’s social media crackdown commences.
These two features are often used by social media companies and other platforms to encourage more engagement with content, so I’ve grouped them together.
Infinite scroll allows you to scroll infinitely — that is, no matter how many TikTok videos you swipe through or how far down the Instagram page you go, there is always more to see and consume. Autoplay is also self-explanatory; videos in your feed will automatically start playing as you scroll by — either with audio or silently with subtitles. This feature hopes to hook you on content that you might have moved past, as once it starts, you get a little bit invested in what you’re watching.
Infinite scroll was a key complaint of a Californian ruling, which declared some social media platforms addictive, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of the first to go under any UK government rulings.
Alerts and push notifications
Another pair of tools that encourage social media usage, alerts and push notifications are the dings and pop-ups you see telling you you just got a DM, that your post got a comment, or that a content creator you have favorited just posted something.
They aim to take you away from whatever else you’re doing and pull you back to the social media platform.
This could be tackled at an app-level, or it could also be handled at a device level — forcing iPhones and Android devices to block app notifications for accounts linked to minors. We’ll have to see which method, if any, the UK Government chooses.
These interactive engagement tools are another one that could be taken away for accounts belonging to users under 16, possibly taking away these options from posts made by young people, and/or removing their ability to like and comment.
While likes and comments are a mainstay of social media platforms, they can have consequences. Bad actors can use these features to harass the poster or to build up a rapport with the poster that could later be exploited.
Banning this aspect would allow younger users to still engage with social media by posting, but in a more bubbled and hopefully safer environment.
Personalised content recommendations
A.k.a. the algorithm: the platform’s software that analyses your watch time, likes, comments, scrolling habits, everything it can to find out what you want to see and feed it to you.
This feature being banned would make social media platforms much less appealing, as your feed won’t be tailored to your interests. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing if the goal is to reduce time spent online, and it could help prevent the wave of young users spiralling into shadier online sects as the algorithm simply feeds you content it thinks you’ll engage with, not necessarily content you should be seeing.
Device-level age verification
So far, the measures we might see aren’t ones most platforms are pushing for; instead, they’ve argued for age restrictions to be brought at a device-level, which would see Apple and Google on the hook for checking the age of phone users and then tailoring their app access accordingly.
While it passes the buck to some extent, the advantages it offers are that it should help limit cases where there’s a disparity between what limits are imposed on social media platforms, and for users, it’s less likely that their private data could leak, as they’re only sharing it with one or two companies rather than every platform where they create an account.
A VPN ban
This idea has been floated a few times, including by the UK’s House of Lords back in December 2025.
It’s certainly still a possibility we’ll see a ban for under-16s, though a wider ban seems a lot less likely. One of our VPN experts, Chiara Castro, has gone through all of the arguments against a VPN in another in-depth story, so check those out, but one of the reasons for limiting VPN access is that they allow users to avoid geo-locked restrictions, as they can spoof their location. Until restrictions are applied more globally, governments may feel VPNs are a loophole they need to close.
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