The government is preparing to unveil a ban on social media for under-16s, as part of an attempt to crack down on online harms for young people.
The UK is expected to follow Australia’s example in raising the minimum age to 16 for sites including TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X, YouTube, Snapchat and Reddit, in a series of measures being unveiled by the government next week.
But he is also expected to go further than Australia by including chatbots and imposing a curfew for older teenagers in a bid to end late-night scrolling.
The government’s consultation on the issue received about 116,000 responses, making it the second-largest government consultation in history after a consultation on equal marriage in 2012.
On Sunday, Downing Street said that around 90 per cent of the 39,116 parents who responded supported a minimum age of 16 before platforms can offer their services to children.
The consultation also saw three quarters of respondents (75 per cent) say that families would argue less and teachers and schools might find it easier to manage digital behaviour (77 per cent) if there were age restrictions on social media, while 88 per cent said fewer children would be exposed to inappropriate or harmful content.
It came as culture secretary Lisa Nandy said banning social media for under-16s is on its own not “the 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 minister told BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that 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.
She also 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.”
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 per cent trust parents to decide which platforms are appropriate, 49 per cent trust an independent regulator, 22 per cent trust schools, 16 per cent trust technology companies and 15 per cent trust government ministers.
The polling, conducted by YouGov, also found 44 per cent support banning under-16s from social media while 39 per cent prefer tighter regulation. Just over one in 10 participants said social media should not be banned or more strictly regulated.
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: “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.”
The National Education Union (NEU) has also called on the prime minister to enact a ban, with the union’s general secretary Daniel Kebede saying: “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.
