UK wants to know if banning under-16s from social media does anything useful

The UK government will trial different levels of restrictions on social media for under-16s with the help of 300 families, alongside a public consultation that has already gathered nearly 30,000 responses.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) will recruit families from across the UK and split them into four groups. Parents in the first group will be shown how to disable social media apps using parental controls to block their teenagers from using them at home. Parents in the second group will cap social media use at one hour a day. Those in the third group will prevent their offspring from using the services between 9pm and 7am. Those in the control group will carry on as before.

Researchers will interview parents and children at the start of the six-week pilot and again at the end to see how the restrictions have affected family life, sleep, and schoolwork. They will also ask about practical challenges such as parents’ abilities to set controls and how effective they were.

DSIT officials and academics will assess data from the pilots alongside responses to the department’s consultation on whether to restrict access for under-16s to social media, gaming, and AI sites, which runs until May 26.

The government announced the consultation in January after pressure from backbenchers, opposition parties, and members of the House of Lords to follow Australia in blocking under-16s from social media. It used this to convince MPs to vote 307 to 173 on March 9 to remove a Lords amendment that would have introduced such a ban.

As well as the small-scale pilot, DSIT said the Wellcome Trust research charity is funding a study of around 4,000 students aged 12-15 at ten schools in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

“Large randomised controlled trials, like the one in Bradford, will allow us to both better understand the impact of social media and select interventions that work for young people as well as their families,” said psychologist and Cambridge University research professor Amy Orben, who is co-leading the study, which starts later this year.

Some researchers have already concluded that social media is harming teenage mental health. “The preponderance of the evidence points to this conclusion: social media is not safe for adolescents,” wrote Jonathan Haidt and Zachary Rausch of New York University’s Stern School of Business in a section of the UN, Oxford University, and Gallup 2026 World Happiness Report.

DSIT’s announcement comes in the same week that Apple said it would introduce age checks for its accounts in the UK, with users having to show they are over 18 to use some services and features.

They will do so either by providing credit card details if these aren’t already on file or a scan of ID such as a driving licence.

Regulator Ofcom welcomed the move, saying: “Apple’s decision that the UK will be one of the first countries in the world to receive new child safety protections on devices is a real win for children and families.” ®

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