- The UK government’s online safety consultation has just ended
- This, and comments from officials, suggest we will soon see new rules for under-16s.
- A ban may not occur, but some features could be restricted
The UK government is expected to announce some form of social media crackdown on young people in the coming weeks, after Prime Minister Kier Starmer said on Tuesday he would act “very, very quickly” following consultation with the public and families; However, it is reported that it may not be a total ban for those under 16 years of age.
According to a report from The Times (behind a paywall), several experts and social media companies themselves hope that addictive features, such as infinite scrolling or auto-playing videos, will be banned.
The logic here seems to be that in places where outright social media bans are in place (like Australia), many under-16s have found ways to get around the restrictions, or have been pushed into less regulated online spaces that ignore or haven’t been included in the ban. So instead of stopping access, it would make sites less addictive and safer by banning specific features.
Below I outline the 8 measures and bans we could see implemented by the UK Government. Other options are possible, although there are several that have been proposed by online safety advocates, the social media companies themselves and those involved in UK politics, so I expect we will see some combination of these introduced when the UK social media crackdown begins.
These two features are often used by social media companies and other platforms to encourage more engagement with content, so I’ve grouped them together.
Infinite scrolling allows you to scroll infinitely, meaning no matter how many TikTok videos you scroll through or how far down the Instagram page you go, there’s always more to view and consume. Autoplay is also self-explanatory; Videos in your feed will start playing automatically as you scroll, either with audio or silently with subtitles. This feature hopes to hook you into content you may have left behind, as once it starts you become a little invested in what you’re watching.
Infinite Scroll was a key complaint of a California ruling, which declared some social media platforms addictive, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of the first to be subject to any UK government ruling.
Alerts and push notifications
Another couple of tools that encourage social media usage, alerts, and push notifications are the prompts and pop-ups you see that tell you that you just received a direct message, that your post received a comment, or that a content creator you’ve favorited just posted something.
Their goal is to draw you away from whatever else you are doing and draw you back to the social media platform.
This could be addressed at the app level, or it could also be handled at the device level, forcing iPhone and Android devices to block app notifications for accounts linked to minors. We will have to see which method, if any, the UK Government chooses.
These interactive engagement tools are another that could be removed for accounts belonging to users under 16, possibly removing these options from posts made by young people and/or removing their ability to like and comment.
While likes and comments are a mainstay of social media platforms, they can have consequences. Bad actors can use these features to harass the advertiser or to establish a relationship with them that could then be exploited.
Banning this aspect would allow younger users to continue interacting with social media through posting, but in a more bubbly and hopefully safer environment.
Personalized content recommendations
Also known as the algorithm: the platform software that analyzes your watch time, likes, comments, scrolling habits, everything it can to figure out what you want to watch and give it to you.
Banning this feature would make social media platforms much less attractive as your feed will not be tailored to your interests. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing if the goal is to reduce time spent online, and it could help prevent the wave of younger users from turning into shadier online cults, as the algorithm is simply feeding you content it thinks you’ll interact with, not necessarily content you should see.
Device-level age verification
So far, the measures we could see are not what most platforms are pushing; Instead, they have advocated for age restrictions to be applied at the device level, which would require Apple and Google to check the age of phone users and then adapt access to their apps accordingly.
While it passes the buck to some extent, the advantages it offers are that it should help limit cases where there is a disparity between the limits being imposed on social media platforms, and for users, their private data is less likely to be leaked as they only share it with one or two companies rather than each platform they create an account on.
A VPN ban
This idea has been raised several times, including in the UK House of Lords in December 2025.
There is certainly still a chance we could see a ban on under-16s, although a broader ban seems much less likely. One of our VPN experts, Chiara Castro, has looked at all the arguments against a VPN in another detailed story, so check them out, but one of the reasons for limiting access to VPNs is that they allow users to bypass geo-blocking restrictions as they can spoof your location. Until restrictions are applied more globally, governments may feel that VPNs are a loophole they need to close.
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