Under-16s will be banned from using social media, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced.
Starmer says social media is making children unhappy, making it easier for bullies to abuse children, and is “designed to be addictive”. A ban would give children more time, security, and more freedom to grow up - as well as more opportunities, he adds.
“That is all any parent wants. They want to know that Britain will be better for their children, that they will get a fair chance,” the PM says in a speech in Downing Street.
Starmer adds that the government is “not prepared to compromise” on the safety and happiness of children - and that includes in the regulation and enforcement of this ban. He says the government has listened to and learned from countries like Australia, where a similar ban has already been introduced.
If they wanted to do it properly they could take a leaf out of the pages from STOKITT or EDRI - but they don’t want to do it properly. They just want to seem like they are doing something, while gathering data and profiteering at the same time. I would imagine Starmer and the rest of them have wet dreams about this shit and wake up with sticky cotton pyjamas every morning.
More like to deanonymize anyone who uses social media.
It should have the Zuck riding the horse. He’s the one pushing for this so the advertisers know if they are showing ads to people and not bots on his platforms.
I have a digital ID and use it all the time. What’s wrong with it?
if the goal was to actually protect kids, it wouldn’t be a problem.
however, this isn’t supposed to protect kids, it’s supposed to protect corpofascists.
This has nothing to do whatsoever with protecting children. That is not the goal. This is anti-privacy, plain and simple. Discussing the merits of this plan as a child protection measure is agreeing to their framing of the discussion, it’s agreeing to discuss it on their terms, and then you’ve already lost.
Here’s a real counterargument: suppose we pass this, and the fascists win the election (I know, completely and utterly unimaginable, but bear with me). Now, organizing protests via social media (as it went in Tunisia, Egypt, Brazil, and so on) becomes impossible, because your actual identity is tied to your social media accounts. In the current climate the fascists will probably go after muslims first, so I hope you haven’t said scary things like insh’allah on facebook, because the government has your name now. Are you gay? Better hope you haven’t left a thirsty comment on the insta of someone of your gender, because the government will know.
Of course, we don’t need to imagine some hypothetical fascist government. I hope you don’t object to genocide and post about it online, because that can be declared support of terrorism at the drop of a hat, and that’s illegal.
and the fascists win the election
Mate….the fascists won the election. How can they push these laws and you still can’t see that?
The people who been calling everyone else fascists are the same people who have been begging every social media site, forum, and company for MORE CENSORSHIP for the last 5+ years. You wanted this because you thought it would only harm people you disagree with. You thought wrong.
You wanted this because you thought it would only harm people you disagree with. You thought wrong.
Don’t talk to me like I’m some liberal.
People throw the word fascists around so loosely these days… it diminishes its meaning.
When is the Two Minutes Hate being instituted then?
They already have that in the US, but it’s a 24 hour news entertainment network.
70% of Australian children get around the ban. And besides: https://blog.rebeltechalliance.org/sm-ban-bad-idea/
Don’t put on a fake mustache when asked to take a photo to verify age.
" designed to be addictive ". So you think adults are somehow magically exempt from addiction?
Adults are allowed to choose to become addicts.
but we still regulate harmful addicting substances, no?
For children yes, and when it affects others safety like with drunk driving. If an adult wants to fuck off in the woods and become an addict, thats entirely acceptable. Apparently some adults think that when we protect vulnerable people that we are taking their freedoms away.
If you’re referring to me, you have the very wrong end of the stick.
The irony is in admitting this shit is harmful and addictive…but uh, only for those too young to monetize.
There are definitely plenty of addictive substances which are banned in the UK
And plenty that are not. What’s your point? Ban alcohol, cigarettes and sport bets?
My point is exactly what I said. I don’t know how much clearer I could have been, TBH, if my post is read in the context of the three proceeding it
All drugs to be legalized when?
Taking drugs have negative effect on others
They learned from countries like Australia huh? Australian here, did they learn how much its not working 😂🙄! None of my kids have anything other than YouTube, but my 9yo knew how to get around it. He doesn’t because he just watches in a browser with ad blockers and we monitor it. My high schooler reports the many and varied ways kids just changed where they go online to continue their crap. Do I think under 16s should be on social media, no. But identity verification is not going to fix that.
This was never about protecting the children. That’s just an excuse to further promote mass surveillance and to exempt companies from responsibility for the additive design of their products and services. It’s easier and more rewarding to penalize the users.
Yep. I’ve since deleted it, but I had to verify my identity on my FB account, which i’d had since 2008. Math is a thing 🙄.
If parents dont care or approve of their kids using social media then the kids will keep doing it. Its still important that the top officials in government are warning adults that its not safe for children there, because some people dont know or won’t trust anyone else.
The problem was thinking it was okay for kids to be on social media, and this fixes that. People on here keep saying the problem being fixed is how to prevent every child from getting on social media, but thats not what’s happening.
This also allows us as a society to punish parents who break these laws or allow their children too. We have to be able to signal to each other in society when something is harmful, whether it affects autonomy or not.
If kids want to be on social media badly enough, they will find a way regardless of approval and permission from their parents. They get banned from Meta and TikTok, they just band together and move to an app not on the list. I agree that people need to know if something is harmful. All the effort and money going into a ban, would’ve been better spent on media literacy and education on how algorithms work, and the addictive nature of some platforms. This is the reason why none of my kids are interested in most social media. Because they know how awful it is. YouTube is a bit more grey, IMO. I filter out shorts for my kids, but they’ve learned a lot of stuff over the years. Yet Roblox isn’t banned? That should’ve been top of the list. Identity verification is a privacy and security nightmare. People should not be required to provide their identity to participate in discussions, or even worse, use their own device.
Thousands of people are already getting arrested every year in the UK over social media posts. Good thing the government cares so much about “protecting the children”, because their parents won’t be able to from jail if they say anything the Epstein class doesn’t like, especially now that every post will be conveniently linked to a verified identity. 🙄
“Thousands”…
Don’t do Musk’s propaganda job for him. The far-right are doing well enough in the UK without people like you amplifying their lies for them
that’s not at all true. please don’t be so gullible
Thousands? Source?
I’ve seen various articles stating 30 arrests a day over social media posts. Here are a few:
https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-struggle-30-arrests-a-day-censorship/
Social media is absolutely addictive and making people unhappy.
But how do you enforce this without removing anonymity?
Once again, they’re going the corporate/government friendly route of surveillance. Ban VPNs, age vefification, soon we’ll be required to use biometric checks to access the internet.
These chucklefucks will do anything other than attempt to solve the problem. Which is more education and help for parents while holding parents and the corporations accountable. But that would cost money rather than having lobbyists and donors fund them even more so 🤷♂️
It all comes back to capitalism.
Maybe ban algorithmically-delivered content? So, for example, consider YouTube. The only way to get content would be to search for videos or to subscribe to individual channels. You can still have a user-curated experience, but that curation must be actively done by the user. This would at least prevent feed algorithms selecting for engagement and rage.
I would rather target the worst practices of social media companies in general, rather than try and keep kids from them. It’s not like adults aren’t harmed by this stuff either.
As I said, hold the corporations accountable. It was never about children in the first place.
This is my biggest issue with it.
Social media has become a blight on society on all levels. Not just children.
But, there’s a lack of education or push for children, and adults too, to be smarter online. They’re just instituting laws and legislation and pushing the onus on corporations to comply.
Sounds good at face value but doesn’t factor in smaller companies who are unable to afford the changes needed to comply (resulting in the pulling out of a region) or they institute dodgey 3rd party verification systems that will just on-sell your data.
Then, there’s the world of dodgey VPNs that kids and people have rushed to. Also, as other people have said, children have found work arounds for age verification.
So, what’s the point? What did we actually achieve? I sometimes defer to the old addage of never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Sometimes I feel it’s more like naievity or good intenaions being controlled by malicious forces.
I don’t know.
What I feel though is that it just doesn’t feel like it’s truly about the children. If it is, there should be a whole lot more factored into this.
Instead it feels like a half baked plan being sold to us as being for the children.
It’s a moral panic being co-opted by those in power. (Ironically, many of those in power being predators themselves, especially here in the US where they’re a major political party 🙃)
Some I can think of off the top of my head:
- The Patriot Act
- COINTELPRO
- The Satanic Panic and resultant legislation
- The War on Drugs
Legitimate concern gets amplified to a moral panic and then legislation is quickly put forth but is never tested or thoroughly understood. And given that most legislation today is written by lobbyists…well 🤷♂️
I’m sure stupidity is a part of it, but that might be a bit too convenient. It’s usually some genuine intention that then gets swept up and captured by malicious infrastructure. They know what they’re doing. They’re narcissists, unempathetic, and the most willing to exploit. Capitalism in a nutshell.
That’s why I’m saying hold the parents and the corporations accountable. Peel back data collection and restrict algorithmic content altogether. Enforce/provide parental education for online technologies and children. Basically, pay attention to your kids, be interested in them and their lives. The infrastructure exists on these social media platforms to restrict and monitor access, as well as it exists at the router level and at the device level as well. It’s the parents who purchase the device and provide internet access. Would we be ok with in home governmental inspections on all of us so that kids can’t have access to a gun or alcohol? No, it’s up to the parent to protect their child from danger. Why is this any different? Why should we all give up our privacy?
First step would be to ban social media from using algorithm suggestions all together.
Cowards. Ban it for everyone if you think its so bad, like you have tobacco. At least be consistent with your completely wrong draconian police state loving boot sucking prohibition ideology.
Typical. Punish the individual, but don’t ever address the underlying social causes.
Capitalism
Now how does banning social media give children a fairer chance growing up and adulthood. It’s just putting blindfolds on children so they it takes longer for them to learn what they should be complaining and uncooperative with
