I understand the problem they’re trying to solve. I work with children and some are obsessed with social media some to extent it affects their day to day lives.

However the same is true for many adults and the poor habits some children have come from the habits of the adults in their lives.

Really we should be looking at the content of what is available online rather than gatekeeping social media. More regulations for these companies.

Forceful abstinence has never been a good tool to keep children from doing anything lol

Also, gatekeeping YouTube and its educational power is absolutely crazy! But you cannot possibly expect anything smart or nuanced implemented at this point.

VPN companies, do your thing!

Edited June 16Jun 16 by pavi

Similar to when Australia brought this in I can see the positives and negatives with this. I'm not entirely sure it's the right way to go about it.

Someone else mentioned it in this thread, weirdly lots of parents seem to be all for the ban, along with all the teachers I know and people with no children against it. Still think the longer term will be to put pressure on the big tech firms, but obviously if you’re child is 12-16 they’re likely to find ways around it, but I suspect it’s more a behaviour/attitude change over the next 10-15 years.

I don't think this serves any real purpose. First, it's not technically feasible, and second, it doesn't actually address the issues these kinds of sanctions are supposed to solve, it merely pushes them out of sight. A far better approach would be to focus on content moderation, comment regulation, and laws that protect not only children but everyone.

There should also be stronger legal frameworks and enforcement mechanisms for example for dealing with people who harass others through messages and online interactions. At the moment, that kind of behavior often goes unnoticed, accounts are rarely removed because of it, and authorities frequently overlook individuals who clearly display troubling or potentially harmful behavior, allowing them to move through society as though they pose no risk at all. People like that are just one part of the social media landscape...

I think the unintended consequence of this could be that if adults have to prove their identity via credit cards/ passports etc then you have a far greater chance of data breaches from sites (especially new ones that pop up in reaction to some getting blocked) which makes us less secure so i think it needs a lot of thought before implementation but I doubt that will happen knowing this lot.

On 15/06/2026 at 17:04, HausofMayhem said:

It is really interesting to see the discourse surrounding this online. I have seen a fair few comments in support of the move from parents of children, and then much more disdain towards it from people that are not parents.

As a teacher of children aged 11 and younger, many of whom spend 99% of their free-time online, and the sheer number of issues social media causes for them, I can see both sides of the argument.

Growing up without social media it is easy to see the benefits of having a youth without it. But then most children and teenagers do not know any different so the shift will be difficult for them.

I hope there are concrete plans to this rollout that support the transition of young people away from social media into other avenues. Imagine if the government invested money in extra-curricular activities for young people instead, or further funding for after school clubs etc... I think there has to be give AND take, not just take.

Exactly my thinking too. When I was a child / young teenager I was part of a deaf youth club that was funded by the council / government. I also attended a summer school with this group and went on camping trips to the Lake District. It enabled me to interact with other deaf children and not feel so isolated. Sadly the funding was pulled when the Tories took over in 2010 and the clubs ceased to exist and in fact the whole deaf centre had to close due to lack of funding. That base is no longer there for those children / teens to spend time and interact and the same goes for hundreds of other clubs across the country.

If they want teenagers to spend less time on phones / social media they need to provide alternative options which will benefit them too.

On 15/06/2026 at 13:12, Iz様 🌟 said:

I think taking steps to combat society's reliance on the algorithm sites is quite a good thing. Regardless of whether VPNs will find their way round it, just let that happen, if you broadly reduce young impressionable people having a dependence on the poison that is staring at social media selling you biased narratives about the world, so much the better. Especially since it's pretty much impossible to find communities on these sites now the way you could in the early internet, the stuff the platform wants to sell its users is far more valuable than nonsense like making social connections.

Agreed 100% and at the very least we need well-designed sites or apps that don’t look like this

and with misspelled AI captions to boot. the children cannot be getting the news this way 😭

20 hours ago, Gezza said:

I think the unintended consequence of this could be that if adults have to prove their identity via credit cards/ passports etc then you have a far greater chance of data breaches from sites (especially new ones that pop up in reaction to some getting blocked) which makes us less secure so i think it needs a lot of thought before implementation but I doubt that will happen knowing this lot.

Absolutely and this was the principal objection to the Online Safety Act too, the cybersecurity issues that arise with forcing collection of sensitive data, facilitated by untrustworthy companies that are untested with all the compliance that must surround said sensitive data. In both cases 'think of the children' is used to stifle more liberty-focused opposition.

I think it's more about tougher regulation as a lot of the addictive and degrading qualities of social media apply to adults as well... But in one way I'm happy to see multiple countries are now moving to put in place restrictions on social media for children in some shape or form. I just hope it's done in a nuanced way that maximises reducing social media's harm and risks whilst amplifying the little positives (of course that won't happen but one can hope).

Yeh I tend to agree with this ban. Obviously there will be effects and problems to it but the first step is formalising laws arouhd its use in the same way as you do with people using cars or drinking alcohol.

There may be a kernel of good intentions behind this, though it sits uneasily with my libertarian leanings in the first place. But I have absolutely no doubt that it will be terribly executed. It’s going to be a selective rather than a total ban in the first place, leaving the way open for both current and future governments to interfere in what’s deemed a good platform and what isn’t. It’s clearly going to lead to more monitoring of the internet activity of adults. Awful.

3 hours ago, Julian_ said:

There may be a kernel of good intentions behind this, though it sits uneasily with my libertarian leanings in the first place. But I have absolutely no doubt that it will be terribly executed. It’s going to be a selective rather than a total ban in the first place, leaving the way open for both current and future governments to interfere in what’s deemed a good platform and what isn’t. It’s clearly going to lead to more monitoring of the internet activity of adults. Awful.

Exactly. Now consider how we think those powers will be used by a potential reform government in the future......

The Clock is ticking Zuckerberg, the clock is ticking ...

BBC News

If Meta loses this trial, Instagram and Facebook could ch...

US states are suing the social media giant to force an overhaul of its platforms for young users.

The UK should ban TikTok for everyone

9 hours ago, Hadji said:

The UK should ban TikTok for everyone

No, just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that others that use it and enjoy it should lose out to it being “banned”

1 hour ago, TomD83 said:

No, just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that others that use it and enjoy it should lose out to it being “banned”

Yes they should. You obviously don’t understand TikTok being an evil platform that brainwashes young people into doing harmful things to themselves or to others

Edited Monday at 21:522 days by Hadji

I'd be happier if my parents stopped using TikTok, in all honesty. Maybe they'll stop getting medical advice from there... though they're still on Facebook.

People do a lot of stupid stuff on there which is dangerous and sometimes fatal. There was a driving on the wrong side of the road challenge people seen on TikTok and they sadly crashed and died

I wish I still had this black-and-white naive thinking. It would make life easier to just find a scapegoat and blame it on some company or celebrity instead of looking deeper into the governing systems and finding the extremely uncomfortable root causes.

This is not just a TikTok problem, it’s a people/parent/education problem among many other things. Even before the internet teenagers and children in general were doing stupid things they copied from someone else, including dying from them.