UK opens consultation on Australia-style ban for under-16s on social media

The UK government opened a public consultation today exploring whether to adopt an Australia-style ban on social media use by children under 16 and a suite of other measures aimed at curbing online harms. The exercise, led by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Education, will gather evidence from parents, young people and international experience before ministers publish a response in summer 2026.

Officials said the review will examine a wide range of proposals, from an outright minimum-age ban on social platforms and raising the digital age of consent to improving age-assurance technology and restricting design features that encourage compulsive use. The government will also consider measures such as phone curfews in schools and tighter rules on features like streaks and infinite scrolling. Ministers will travel to Australia to study that country’s national ban, introduced in December 2025, as part of the evidence-gathering process.

The consultation comes alongside immediate domestic steps. Ofsted has been asked to assess how schools implement mobile phone policies during inspections, and the Department for Education will issue strengthened guidance asking schools in England to be phone-free environments from the summer term. That guidance stops short of legislating a total ban, ministers said. New screen-time guidance for parents of children aged five to 16 is being published, with separate advice for parents of under-fives due in April 2026.

Ministers framed the consultation as part of a broader online-safety regime. They pointed to government figures indicating that the Online Safety Act has raised the share of children encountering age checks online from 30 percent to 47 percent and has cut visits to pornography sites by about a third. Officials also cited recent international concern over AI-generated sexual imagery as a driver of urgency for new protections; the government has already set out plans to ban AI tools that produce non-consensual nude images and to prevent children taking, sharing or viewing nude images.

The announcement drew mixed political reaction. Conservative MP Kemi Badenoch said the consultation amounted to “more delay.” Lord Nash, who has tabled an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that would require social platforms to block users under 16 within a year of the law passing, described the consultation as offering “nothing” for concerned parents, teachers and professionals and characterised it as further delay. Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman Munira Wilson warned there was “no time to waste,” adding that the process risked “kicking the can down the road.”

Education sector leaders urged caution on implementation. Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, welcomed a careful review of a ban and stressed the need to consider unintended consequences, while warning that schools must not be “policed” by heavy-handed inspections.

Parliamentary activity runs in parallel: later this week the House of Lords is due to vote on Lord Nash’s amendment, which, if passed, would force the issue into Commons debate. The government’s consultation leaves multiple paths open, from regulatory tweaks and school guidance to the radical step of an age-based platform ban, and sets up a high-stakes policy decision on how the state, families and technology companies share responsibility for children's digital lives.