UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on June 15 that the country would ban everyone under the age of 16 from accessing several social media websites, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, and Xx. The ban is expected to take effect in the spring of 2027 after the British Parliament approves a law later this year.
The government said enforcement would target technology companies, not children. Social media companies that fail to show they have taken “reasonable steps” to keep children away from their services will face hefty fines.
Announcing the policy, Starmer said, “Every parent can see it with their own eyes. Social media is making kids miserable.”
Starmer said the ban was influenced by Australia’s experience and that Britain would go even further. He did not dispute that some teenagers would find ways to circumvent the ban, but argued that the difficulty of enforcement was never accepted as a reason for abandoning the age limit for alcohol.
A few days later, on June 18, UAE announced The proposal to ban social media for children under 15 and other restrictions on teens accessing such apps.
Also read: Framing social media addiction
a global wave
Britain and the United Arab Emirates are the latest in a series of countries that have legislated or are imposing restrictions on children’s social media access.
Australia had prepared the blueprint. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 came into force on December 10 last year, making Australia the first country to impose a nationwide ban. Under its law, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Twitch, X and Kik are required to take reasonable steps to prevent users under 16 from having accounts.
Companies that fail to comply face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars, or about $32 million. The Australian government has said that approximately 5 million accounts identified as belonging to children were closed in the weeks following the ban, and that action was taken to remove another 300,000 by March 2026.
Indonesia implemented a similar age restriction in March 2026, covering platforms that could expose youth to drug addiction, pornography, online scams and cyberbullying. Brazil enacted a law requiring people under 16 to link social media accounts to a legal guardian, while also banning addictive platform features like infinite scroll.
Canada introduced legislation this year to establish a digital safety commission, which would have the power to ban children under 16 from social media unless social media companies demonstrate they have removed harmful content. Malaysia also requires social media apps, which have more than 8 million users in the country, to prevent users under 16 from having accounts. France, Spain, Denmark, Greece, South Korea and Thailand are among those studying or pursuing similar measures.
HT has reported In February this year, the Indian government was considering age-related restrictions on social media use.
Social media companies have, as expected, protested against the restrictions. Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, warned that such restrictions pose a greater risk to children. Responding to the UK announcement, a Meta spokesperson said: “As we have seen in Australia, bans isolate teens from online communities and information and drive them toward unregulated options that lack built-in protections and parental controls.” Alphabet-owned YouTube similarly warned that “a complete ban pushes kids out of curated, supervised, profitable experiences and toward anonymous, less-safe services”.
How did Australia implement the ban?
Because most restrictions in other countries have been in place for only a few months, Australia’s example remains the most comprehensive so far. The main enforcement issue is ensuring that social media companies can reliably determine whether a user is under the age of 16.
Before the ban was implemented, the Australian Government launched an independent Age Assurance Technology Trial (AATT) to evaluate verification methods for accuracy, usability, privacy concerns and accessibility. Its findings shaped guidance later issued by Australia’s online safety regulator, the eSafety Commissioner.
The guidance recommended against a single mandatory method and urged companies to allow a layered system to detect if an underage user is attempting to open or operate an account. Social media companies cannot rely solely on a user’s declared age – which is submitted when the user signs up for an account – to comply with the ban.
For example, one of these methods is to estimate age. Social media apps may draw on existing behavioral data such as IP address geolocation, device history, usage patterns, terminology in posts, and interest groups a user follows to flag accounts that may belong to people under 16.
The second is to estimate the age of the face. Companies may partner with third parties that perform age verification through artificial intelligence technologies. In simple terms, a user submits a selfie or a video selfie, which is analyzed by a software that comes with an estimated age range. To address privacy concerns, age verification companies do not store images after the age estimate is generated.
The third method is identity verification. Social media companies may ask for identity documents or check a user’s age with a bank or email service. In these cases, the user may provide credit card details, and the company may simply contact the bank to confirm the user’s age.
Compliance is not a one-time check. Social media companies are expected to continuously monitor behavioral signals and take action if there is any suspicion that a user is underage.
Also read: A global reassessment of social media for youth.
getting around restrictions
Even though governments have imposed restrictions, even teenagers have found a way through it.
Within days of Australia imposing the ban, social media was flooded with posts from young people claiming they were still online.
Journalists also documented a number of methods used by children to avoid the ban. The Washington Post reported in December 2025 that a 14-year-old girl from New South Wales said she would get her face scanned by her mother in her place.
As Fortune reports, a Reddit user suggested using face masks sold on Chinese e-commerce platforms to confuse age detection systems.
Typically, teens turn to VPNs – virtual private networks, software that routes Internet traffic through servers in other countries – to hide a user’s real location and bypass geographic restrictions.
But Australia anticipated the VPN problem. Information Age, a publication that covers the country’s technology policies, reported that eSafety told companies they could use the services to detect VPN use and cross-reference IP intelligence data to identify users trying to circumvent restrictions.
Australia’s communications minister, Anika Wells, expressed confidence that the amount of behavioral data platforms keep on users will eventually catch those using borrowed credentials or location-masking tools, as Time reported in April this year.
Also read: Anti-social: Why are youth quietly leaving social media?
Did the ban work?
Between January 19 and February 2 this year, Australia’s eSafety surveyed 898 parents and guardians with children aged 8 to 15. It found that almost half (49.7%) of parents surveyed reported that their child had an account on at least one social media platform before the restrictions. After the ban came into effect, this proportion dropped to 31.3%.
“Patterns of low account ownership were observed across 10 platforms,” ​​a March report said.
But the regulator also said that despite the cuts, “a large proportion of children under 16 retain accounts on age-restricted platforms”.
Another survey of 1,050 Australians aged 12 to 15 in April 2026 by the Molly Rose Foundation, a suicide prevention organisation, found that more than 60% of children who had social media accounts before the ban still had access to at least one account.
Nearly two-thirds of respondents also said companies took no action to ban their accounts. The foundation’s CEO described the results as “major questions about the effectiveness of Australia’s social media ban”, Fortune reported in April 2026.
(with inputs from agencies)
