By Rebecca Smith | Updated on Jun 14, 2026 at 10:21 AM
A UK ban on under-16s using social media set to be unveiled this week is not “a silver bullet” but will have “a significant role to play” in keeping children safe, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told Sky News on Sunday.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer will lay out the restrictions following a government consultation that Nandy said showed the “vast majority” wanted to see the ban enforced, including “many young people themselves,” she said. When that consultation was launched, it was a question “of how we better protect young people, not if,” Nandy said.
Teenagers will be banned from certain social media platforms and have their daily usage curbed under the reforms, the Sunday Times reported, without saying where it got the information from.
The curbs will go further than the landmark move by Australia late last year by targeting technology considered harmful to children, including chatbots, the newspaper said. The law in Australia instructs services such as ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, Snap Inc.’s Snapchat, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, Reddit Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram to keep under-16s off their platforms or face fines.
The Sunday Times said the UK planned to raise the minimum age for social media users to 16 for the same sites, while also placing curbs on romantic chatbots, following several legal cases involving AI agents simulating relationships and encouraging children to take their own lives.
Speaking on the BBC, Nandy said she didn’t want to preempt the prime minister’s announcement, but said regulation hasn’t been sufficient up to now and tech companies “have had more than enough time to get their house in order.”
If they aren’t prepared to do so, it makes sense for them to lose the right to market their products to children, she added. “I don’t think the government should be neutral about that.”
Read more: UK’s Starmer to Announce Under-16s Social Media Ban in Days
The UK’s action comes as policymakers across the world face growing pressure to enact rules to shield minors from toxic content and cyberbullying. Greece, France, Indonesia and Malaysia are among countries proposing or actioning similar restrictions.
The Sunday Times said it was not yet clear when the UK ban will come into effect and how it will be enforced.
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said last week that ministers are also looking at how they could use age-verification tools introduced in Britain last year restricting access to pornography sites to adults to prevent children from using social media. Those tools usually ask a user to confirm their age using banking or credit card details or through an age check from their mobile network operator.