Under pressure, Starmer has opened the door to an Australia-style ban on under-16s using social media. But the Prime Minister’s own thinking on the issue is changing as he fights with Kemi Badenoch to champion online safety. The House reports on an issue inflaming passions like few others
Keir Starmer finds himself trapped between a groundswell demanding the UK follow Australia and ban social media for those under 16 and child safety charities warning the move would be counter-productive.
The pressure increased after the tabling of a cross-party amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill demanding that children be prevented access to social media, moved by Conservative peer Lord Nash. With his room for manoeuvre diminishing, the Prime Minister has played for time, authorising Tech Secretary Liz Kendall to announce a consultation.
But while the move has relieved the short-term pressure, Kendall and Starmer must now navigate a highly complex, ticklish policy question that is generating extraordinary passions.
Wes Streeting’s public backing for a ban in a round of interviews early in the new year followed that of Andy Burnham. While the Manchester mayor’s espousal may have been expected, the Health Secretary’s intervention strained Cabinet collective responsibility and raised eyebrows.
It would be understandable if Kendall, whose brief includes social media regulation, was at the very least irritated by Streeting’s intervention. She is understood to share Starmer’s scepticism, as does Business Secretary Peter Kyle (a close friend of Streeting) and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson. All believe that the UK should at least wait to see how events unfold in Australia before rushing to follow suit. The position of Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, is unclear but it is notable that MPs in the Blue Labour faction, with which she is associated, support a ban.
Ministers recognise that this is an issue that is motivating constituents like few others. “We are dealing with some high emotions here,” said one well-positioned source. “And MPs are getting a lot, and I mean a lot, of parents demanding we take action.”
That pressure found expression in a letter, signed by 60 Labour MPs, that seems to have been the final catalyst for the consultation. “We believe the onus must be placed on technology platforms, not parents, to prevent underage access. We would support a model similar to Australia’s that requires companies to take meaningful steps to enforce age limits,” it read.
Labour MPs told The House they have received as many emails from constituents on this issue as they did on assisted dying and winter fuel, demonstrating the strength of feeling.
Fearing the Nash amendment would pass in the Lords, whips recommended the government do what it can to avoid a rebellion in the Commons when the legislation returns.
Few doubt that such a measure would pass if put to a straight vote. As one influential Labour backbencher puts it: “I am fully in favour of a ban, and a majority of MPs will be as well.”
It is simplistic, however, to suggest Starmer only moved under pressure from Streeting, Burnham and others. The thinking in No 10 has changed following the battle with Elon Musk over his AI tool Grok, they say. Starmer scored a victory over Musk in forcing him to prevent it being used to ‘nudify’ images of children.
Figures like Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, do not want to surrender to Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, the issue of online safety. There is also a sense that the tech firms have had their chance to act and have failed to do so. It may well be that the deteriorating relationship with the US is playing into a mood for a more muscular approach to a sector dominated by American firms.
The three-month consultation on social media includes whether to raise the digital age of consent and whether to ban under-16s altogether. Alongside this, officials will consider phone curfews, limits on addictive design features such as “streaks” and infinite scrolling, and new screen-time guidance for parents.
“Through the Online Safety Act, this government has already taken clear, concrete steps to deliver a safer online world for our children and young people. These laws were never meant to be the end point, and we know parents still have serious concerns. That is why I am prepared to take further action,” said Kendall launching the consultation.
After announcing the review, Kendall met with Labour MPs who had penned the letter calling for a ban, telling them she had not yet made up her mind on it.
Streeting, meanwhile, asked the moral philosopher, Jonathan Haidt, a high-profile advocate of banning social media for under-16s and a favourite author of Badenoch, to speak to his officials. The House understands the pair are hosting an event in the department soon to discuss the evidence for a social media ban and screentime harming children.
Speaking to the BBC earlier this month, Streeting said: “Sometimes I feel like my concentration span suffers because of doom scrolling and the way in which information is served up in increasingly short, bite-size chunks. And I worry about what that means for the development and the cognitive development of a generation of children and young people.”
Kyle as tech secretary insisted that the UK should not follow the Australian example. He is understood to be much more in favour of bringing in controls on screen time for children than an outright ban.
Phillipson, meanwhile, has steered clear of endorsing an under-16s ban, instead focusing on other measures, such as limiting mobile phones in schools. Similar to social media, the Education Secretary is persuaded by the argument that blanket bans do more harm than good.
An internal assessment of the first weeks of the Australian ban circulating Whitehall highlights three distinct problems: diversion to other unregulated platforms, the allied issue of defining what is social media (does Google Maps count for example?) and evidence that parents are simply allowing their children to use their accounts, exposing them to potentially even more unsuitable content than before. For sceptics of an immediate blanket ban, the hope is that as evidence from Australia starts to mount so the debate around how to limit access might become more sophisticated.
The public, it seems, are not currently in the mood for nuance, however. Recent More In Common polling found seven in 10 Britons support banning social media for under-16s. They found that while older people are more supportive, support spans across every age group, from a low of 53 per cent among Gen Z, to a high of 88 per cent among those over the age of 75.
Polling from the Good Growth Foundation found that 66 per cent of the public support a legal ban on social media for children under the age of 16. They also found a spike in support among those who voted for Labour at the 2024 election but would now consider voting for Reform UK, with 75 per cent backing a ban.
Digital rights campaigner Baroness Kidron and crossbench peer tells The House she would back a ban. “I am [supportive] but it is not a silver bullet, and we need all the government to commit to implementing the Online Safety Act,” she explains.
“We should treat tech companies like any other and make them subject to product safety and consumer rules including those that protect children. But in the absence of that, then a ban makes sense.”
A host of Labour MPs have voiced support for the under-16s ban. Helen Hayes, chair of the Education Committee, is one of those, telling The House: “As concerns about the impact of social media and digital technology on children grow, there are increasing calls for measures such as a statutory ban on phones in schools and to raise the age of digital citizenship to 16, which I support.”
The proposals also have support from Chi Onwurah, chair of the Science and Technology Committee. “It’s something we need to consider. The committee hasn’t directly come to a view on it, but I would recommend that the government consider it closely,” she says.
“Self-regulation isn’t working and social media companies and platforms need to understand that governments have other levers – this may be one of them.”
Jess Asato, the Labour MP who has campaigned to ban ‘nudification’ apps, says: “I think we should be looking very seriously at what Australia has done.”
“We do actually need to be doing something and sparking that debate now,” adds Jo Platt, another supportive Labour MP.
Another Labour MP who backs a ban tells The House they are “really concerned about the impact these social media companies are having on our young people”, adding: “They make their money on capturing and keeping attention, not doing what is best for us.”
Despite overwhelming Labour support, there has been opposition from online safety campaigners. Indeed, some MPs feel that implementing a statutory ban on phones in schools would be an easier win for the government than a blanket ban on social media.
Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell who took her own life after viewing suicide and self-harm content online, says an under-16 social media ban would be wrong. “We need a coherent plan to reduce harm and improve wellbeing, not easy fixes that are being pushed by well-intentioned campaigners and adopted by politicians looking to further their own political prospects,” he wrote in a piece for The House.
The Conservative Party has been leading support for banning under-16s from social media platforms, as well as prohibiting smartphones in schools. The party has also proposed that children be allowed to opt out of screen-based homework.
There has been pushback from Conservative peer Lord Frost, who hit out at the ban on X: “Can’t we at least pause and learn from the Australian experience rather than rushing in ourselves to do exactly the same thing?
“There was a time when the Tory party would have considered endorsement of their proposals by Labour and by public sector lobbyists as a red flag.”
The Liberal Democrats put forward their own amendment to the bill in the Lords last week, going further than proposals from any other party so far: introducing film-style age ratings of up to 18 for harmful social media platforms. The party says it would target platforms such as X that “host extreme content” such as “graphic violence or pornography” which could be rated 18+.
The government wanted time to see how Australia’s experiment unfolded, but Westminster is moving too fast for that. Insiders warn that one more high-profile failure by big tech would force ministers to act sooner than planned.
Reporting by Harriet Symonds, Zoe Crowther, Francis Elliott and Sienna Rodgers
