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The UK’s Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy

The UK’s Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy

Overhype

from the techlash-on-demand dept

Tue, Jun 16th 2026 01:14pm -

Mike Masnick

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not having a particularly good time of being the UK’s leader. Basically everyone thinks he’s doing a terrible job and it seems unlikely that he’ll be in the role much longer. Apparently desperate to turn the tide on being historically disliked, he’s decided to grab the most reliable life preserver in modern politics: the techlash. Over the last few weeks, everything he’s done can be summarized in a single sentence: "let’s blame the internet for everything bad."

It started a week ago with an announcement that if internet social media companies didn’t wave a magic wand and make all sexting disappear… he would start putting tech execs in prison.

"Today I’m calling on tech companies operating in this country to introduce device controls that prevent children from sending and receiving sexually ​explicit images," Starmer said in a speech at London Tech Week. "This is not an impossible challenge."

Under the new plans, firms like Apple and Google ​would have to build or activate technical solutions on smartphones and tablets to detect and block nude images for children. ⁠Adults would still be able to take, share or view nude content through an age verification process.

If companies did not act within three months, the government said ​it would bring forward legislation to force them to do so or risk facing fines or, as a last resort, the threat of criminal liability for bosses.

This is very much the magical "nerd harder" thinking by a technologically clueless bureaucrat who thinks that societal problems can be solved by making tech companies do the impossible: stopping humans from doing stupid things.

That magical wishcasting continued this week with Starmer announcing that the UK would be following Australia’s completely failed experiment in "banning" kids from social media, by putting in place an even stricter ban of teens from even more internet services.

The U.K. plans to follow the same model for a social media ban as Australia, which last year became the first country to bar under-16s from holding social media accounts. Platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to exclude children younger than 16 could be punished with multimillion-dollar fines.

The U.K. said its ban will apply to platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, but not YouTube Kids or messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal. Starmer stressed that enforcement action will target tech companies, not children.

The prime minister also said he will go further than Australia’s measures.

He said the government will act to prevent strangers from contacting children on gaming and livestreaming platforms. Authorities are also considering additional measures including overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for those under 18. More details are expected next month.

This is more nerd harder nonsense. Again, Australia’s ban has been a total joke, with the vast majority of kids figuring out how to get around the ban, and the ones most hurt by the ban being teens who have lost access to the communities that were most important to them. Again, every detailed study on the subject has found that the number of teenagers who have negative experiences on social media is tiny.

But the media and politicians absolutely love to blame the internet for any sort of societal problem, and it makes a wonderful scapegoat for their own policy failures.

Even Ian Russell — a prominent UK child safety activist who has spent years blaming social media for anything bad that happens to children — finds this whole thing particularly pointless. Russell, who became an activist after his daughter died by suicide (which he blames on her social media experience), has pointed out that these kinds of teen bans are the kinds of headline grabbing measures politicians love, but do nothing to actually help kids.

Starmer also promised me personally that he would implement effective measures to strengthen regulation and finally address the harm caused by social media. He has failed to keep either promise.

He also promised bereaved parents after the recent consultation on children’s social media use that he would follow the evidence and take the time to consider his response then act decisively. Instead, he has rushed out a ban.

Indeed, the evidence has long suggested that these kinds of bans actually can make things worse by isolating kids who are at most...