Thank you for contacting me about the ban on social media for under-16s, which was announced on 15 June.
Having spent the better part of a decade working on online safety – first as the Secretary of State who introduced the original online harms White Paper in 2019, and subsequently scrutinising the Online Safety Act's passage and implementation – I have consistently argued that children are not adequately protected online, and the evidence confirms it. Ofcom data shows that 37% of three to five year olds are already using social media. The current position cannot be defended.
I do have sympathy with raising the age at which children can access social media, though we should not thereby allow platforms to abandon their obligations to mitigate harms to children online, and I also support raising the digital age of consent beyond 13. Children should not be processing data agreements with platforms before they are equipped to understand what they are agreeing to. The Government announced a three-month consultation examining options that include a minimum age for access, stronger age verification, raising the digital age of consent from 13 and restrictions on addictive design features like infinite scrolling. It is a direction of travel I welcome.
However, I want to emphasise that a ban cannot be the whole answer. The Online Safety Act already gives Ofcom the tools to act on harmful algorithmic design – the features that draw children towards increasingly dark content and make it almost impossible to stop scrolling. The regulator has shown a troubling reluctance to use those powers to their full extent, and a social media ban must not allow that reluctance to go unchallenged.
There are also important questions of definition. Social media covers an enormous range of platforms and services, and we must be precise about what falls within scope. We must equally ensure that wherever the age limit is drawn, the child safety duties that platforms carry under the Online Safety Act are not quietly diluted in response.
It is important that Members of Parliament, as legislators, pay careful attention to the detail of the ban when it is laid before the House. I will continue working alongside my colleagues to ensure that children really are protected in the online world.
You can view my question to the Secretary of State when the ban was announced on 15 June here: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2026-06-15/debates/D7F73285-1B09-409A-B9CA-49AED9B76D10/SocialMediaBanForUnder-16S#contribution-A3812247-0CD1-4A46-BCEF-A2BDFB939F6D
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.
