As trailed in the media over this weekend, the UK prime minister Sir Kier Starmer has today announced that the UK government intends to introduce a full ban on under-16s from accessing social media platforms Social media to be banned for under-16s in landmark government move to give kids their childhood back – GOV.UK.

Scope of the ban

For the purpose of this ban, the announcement defines a social media platform as a user-to-user platform, whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allows users to post material, alongside algorithms. The announcement notes that this means the ban will include all of the most well-known social media platforms, although we would expect that all platforms meeting this criteria will be subject to the ban regardless of size. However, the government has gone on to say that it does not intend for messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal to be included in this ban.