Hundreds of UK teenagers to pilot social media bans and restrictions | Social media ban

Hundreds of young people will be signed up to trial social media bans in the coming months, along with overnight digital curfews and daily screen time limits, as part of Keir Starmer’s plan to tackle the negative effects of smartphone use.

The trials will be part of a three-month consultation launched this week that could lead to a complete ban on social media for under-16s, similar to the one introduced in Australia. Ministers have said they are ready to toughen up laws just six months after child protection measures were introduced in the Online Safety Act.

“There is a growing consensus that more needs to be done,” the government said in a statement announcing “the world’s most ambitious consultation on social media”. He added: “Contributions to this consultation will determine how the government decides what this will look like.”

The consultation will consider whether there is a minimum age for using social media and, if so, what that age should be; whether platforms should turn off addictive features like infinite scrolling and autoplay that keep kids hooked late into the night; whether mandatory nightly curfews will help children sleep better and at what age they should be implemented; and how age verification enforcement should be strengthened.

It will also cover the growing issue of whether children can use AI chatbots without restrictions and the impact of gaming platforms like Roblox.

The first trial will include approximately 150 children aged between 13 and 15, and will test their reactions to completely blocking social media, limiting it to one hour a day, and banning them from screens throughout the night. Their sleep, mood and physical activity will be evaluated.

Many child safety campaign groups opposed the blanket ban. This would risk “dragging young people into darker, unregulated corners of the internet”, the NSPCC said last month. The 5Rights Foundation also said social media companies should not be “let off the hook” with a ban that many children could possibly escape.

But the Smartphone-Free Childhood campaign, which recently had 250,000 supporters write to MPs demanding a social media ban for under-16s, said: “Ordinary mums and dads are tired of trying to outpace the parental algorithms created by trillion-dollar companies.”

Campaign co-founder Joe Ryrie said: “This consultation should result in clear age limits to protect children from unsafe platforms and ensure that responsibility and accountability for child safety is where it belongs, with companies designing and profiting from these systems.”

Meta, which runs Instagram, declined to comment on the consultation. TikTok and X did not respond to requests for comment.

The Guardian last month revealed that tech companies and their lobbyists’ access to government ministers had dwarfed that of child safety campaigners. Technology representatives attended at least 639 meetings with ministers in the two years to October 2025; in contrast, there were 75 meetings attended by campaigners for better protection of children online.

Technology secretary Liz Kendall said: “We know parents everywhere are grappling with how much screen time their children should be given, when they should give them a phone, what they’re seeing online and the impact it all has. That’s why we’re asking children and parents to attend this landmark consultation on how young people can thrive in an age of rapid technological change.”

The government acknowledged that some children’s charities opposed the blanket ban. “That’s why this consultation looks beyond the ban and covers a wide range of options, from curfew to the effects of chatbots and games,” he said.

Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, which was set up in response to the suicide of 14-year-old Molly Russell after being exposed to damaging Instagram posts, said: “Parents are rightly demanding action and they need the prime minister to fix this. This means following the evidence rather than implementing simple solutions that will be quickly resolved and create a false sense of security.”

“This should be the down payment on making the safety and welfare of children a non-negotiable cost of doing business in the UK.”