UK Plans Under-16 Social Media Ban, Putting Age Assurance at the Center

The UK government says it will bar social media platforms from offering their services to users under 16, a move that turns on the question of how platforms can reliably establish a user’s age at scale. The plan would make age assurance, the set of methods used to check or estimate age without necessarily collecting a full identity, the mechanism that decides who can hold an account.

The ban is aimed at the major social platforms while carving out other services. Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X would fall under the restriction, while messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal are excluded, and narrowly defined exemptions are planned for educational, e-commerce, and music-streaming services. Alongside the under-16 ban, the government plans to restrict live streaming by younger users, limit contact from strangers, and require age-18 minimums on AI ‘romantic companion’ chatbots, with several protections switched on by default for 16- and 17-year-olds.

How platforms will actually verify ages remains unresolved. The communications regulator Ofcom is to run a rapid study on highly effective age assurance measures, the same standard already applied to adult-content sites under the Online Safety Act, and the government has pointed to Australia’s approach as a reference for keeping children from bypassing the checks. The available methods range from facial age estimation to ID document checks and third-party age-assurance providers, each carrying its own accuracy and privacy tradeoffs at population scale.

“Tech giants had their chance and failed, but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations,” said Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The government said its consultation drew more than 116,000 responses, with around nine in ten parents supporting the ban.

The plan extends an age-assurance regime that has been taking shape in the UK for over a year. Platforms have already begun age-verification pilots ahead of Online Safety Act enforcement, and the UK is following a path set by Australia, which tied social media age-verification requirements to its national digital ID system. The European Parliament has separately backed EU-wide age checks to keep under-16s off social media, placing the UK move within a wider regulatory turn toward age gating.

The government plans to bring the measures to Parliament before Christmas, with the protections expected to take effect in the spring of 2027.

Sources: UK Government

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team