United Kingdom it will be necessary social networks Companies must set a default block for teenage users aged 16 and 17 during certain hours, the country’s Ministry of Science, Innovation and Technology revealed Tuesday evening.
This new automatic curfew would theoretically prevent older teens from accessing social platforms between midnight and 6 a.m., although this feature can be turned off. The non-mandatory restriction must be imposed at the same time as a threat total ban on these services for children under 16, which should come into force in spring 2027. Both measures come after the Online Safety ActA controversial set of laws that require platforms hosting pornography and other content considered potentially harmful to children to verify that their users are 18 or older.
Young Britons will also see a “crackdown” on “addictive” features of social apps, DSIT said in a press release, including “videos that automatically play one after another and feeds that continually offer personalized content.” These mechanisms will be “deactivated by default for older adolescents”, according to a press release from the ministry. However, people will also be able to bypass them.
The first comprehensive set of social media regulations will be submitted to Parliament later this year before coming into force in 2027.
The DSIT said the latest set of proposed regulations aims to “ensure there is no cliff in protections as young people enter their later teenage years”, as future young people will hypothetically have no experience of social media before this age, thanks to the constraints placed on apps and websites by the Online Safety Act.
“These measures will be crucial in helping young people get the sleep they need, concentrate on school and university and spend more quality time with family and friends, all fundamental to building happy, healthy and fulfilling adult lives,” UK Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said in a statement on the new measures.
“We want young people to enjoy the benefits of technology while having the tools to make the online world a place where they can thrive,” Kendall said.
The DSIT further reported that Kendall aims to bring in additional protections around artificial intelligence, including mandatory chatbot breaks for children under 18, who should already be blocked from AI platforms capable of imitating romantic conversations. Regulators will be tasked with restricting services that provide “dangerous, misleading or unverified mental health advice”, with the department warning that chatbots deemed to “pose a serious threat” to young people in Britain could be banned altogether.
Finally, the government seeks to strengthen children’s media literacy with updated school curricula covering AI, technological bias and disinformation, as well as strategies for identifying violent and misogynistic content.
In recent years, as tech giants faced a wave of major trials And alarming research linked to the potential negative effects of social media on young users, advocates mobilized around the world pushing for wider age limits on these platforms, with parents and politicians often agreeing on the need for such protections. The British government, for example, found that approximately 9 out of 10 parents there “support a legal requirement for social media services to have a minimum age of access”. A Pew Research Center survey released this month found that 56 percent of American adults would also be in favor of a ban on social networks for those under 16.
But groups whose Electronic Frontier FoundationTHE American Civil Liberties Union, International amnesty And GLAAD have strongly criticized this type of “age control”, arguing that it is an overly simplistic solution that restricts the rights to open information and freedom of expression. They point out that lawmakers can use these restrictions to censor sex education And LGBTQ Resources which are of crucial value to adolescents.
Then there is the question of whether this regulation works. In Australia, which became the first nation ban children under 16 from accessing a large number of popular social media apps, resulting in the removal of some 5 million accounts in one month, initial research showed that approximately 75 percent young people aged 14 to 15 circumvent the age limit. The government of the country is investigate suspected non-compliance of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube because it has difficulty enforcing the law, and he is now considering double the fines for the offending platforms, even if it has not yet collected any.
For the United Kingdom, which has been quite explicit about the adoption of “same model“As Australia moves children away from social media, similar problems could arise.
Update, July 14, 7 p.m.: This story has been updated to correct the full name of the EFF. It’s the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
