In a landmark move, the UK government has joined Australia in outlawing social media for under-16s. Will it work?

“Children will be given back their childhoods,” said the UK government on Monday, as it announced a social media ban for under-16s – a landmark policy backed by 90% of parents, according to a recent public consultation.

Amid growing concern that childhood is being hijacked by algorithms and that social media is exposing children to harmful content, the UK government said it was “marking a line in the sand and setting a new normal for future generations”. 

The ban, due to come into force next spring, will include platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, but excludes messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal.

It comes after a report by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges which warned that children were being “continuously exposed to hateful, addictive and grossly distressing content” online. The academy said concern over social media and smartphone use now ranked alongside smoking and not wearing seatbelts as a unifying issue for the medical profession.

The UK government’s announcement was welcomed by the Smartphone Free Childhood Movement, which was co-founded by former Positive News editor Daisy Greenwell and her husband Joe Ryrie.

“For years, parents have been fighting a losing battle against some of the most powerful companies in the world as smartphones and social media have become an ever bigger part of childhood. Today feels like a turning point,” said Ryrie.

This moment belongs to the hundreds of thousands of parents who refused to stay quiet over the past two years

“This social media ban won’t solve every problem overnight, but it is a major step forward because millions of children will now get a few more years to grow up before entering online environments that were never designed with their wellbeing in mind.

“This moment belongs to the hundreds of thousands of parents who refused to stay quiet over the past two years. Together they’ve proved that ordinary people really can shape public policy – and that childhood doesn’t have to be defined by the commercial interests of a few technology companies in Silicon Valley.”