{"id":60379,"date":"2026-03-26T09:30:05","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T09:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/uk-wants-to-know-if-banning-under-16s-from-social-media-does-anything-useful\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:30:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T09:30:05","slug":"uk-wants-to-know-if-banning-under-16s-from-social-media-does-anything-useful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/uk-wants-to-know-if-banning-under-16s-from-social-media-does-anything-useful\/","title":{"rendered":"UK wants to know if banning under-16s from social media does anything useful"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n