Response to the Government announcement on a social media ban for under-16s

The Government’s announcement today is a disservice to all the parents who have campaigned so determinedly for change, to all the young people who responded to the consultation with their views and to all the organisations and campaigners in our Network who spent considerable time and resource submitting evidence and alternative recommendations to the Government in recent months.

There is no escaping the fact that this announcement has been rushed out to meet political imperatives, just like the consultation was rushed out in January in response to parental campaigns and the legislation was rushed through to stave off Parliamentary rebellions. The Government’s supporting documents provide some additional detail on their intentions and objectives but the analysis of the evidence they received and the actions they are taking as a result is, at best, confused and at worst illogical. We will be publishing more on this in the coming days.

At each stage of this process since January, promises of tough action have been made. Yet at each stage, the Government’s hasty, muddled response has narrowed the options for meaningful, systemic change that would address the root causes of harm suffered by children, and all users - in favour of an ever smaller menu of tick-box options. Today we have the natural end-point of this process: an announcement that children will be banned from accessing social media platforms, but no further detail on how it will work except that it will follow the Australian model in scope and rely on highly effective age assurance to be implemented. Measures to age-gate sexualised chatbots do not address the wider design-based harms - which indeed DSIT references as evidence in its response - that arise from chatbots more generally. Further announcements are due to be made on features like infinite scrolling or the potential introduction of a curfew for older children.

This is not the way to make good policy. More importantly, it is not the way to deliver an implementable, enforceable solution to address the risks and dangers children increasingly face online nor will it meet the justifiably high expectations of parents for change.

Banning children from social media platforms without addressing the underlying harmful, profit-driven design of those platforms will not make them safer. From recent polling we know that 84% of the UK public are convinced that requiring companies to prove their products are designed to be safe before use would keep everyone safe on social media platforms. And yet the current measures do nothing to make online spaces safe for everyone from the start. Instead, they remove access for under 16s and with it the incentives for the platforms to do anything to change the harmful, addictive design of their products.

Mandating a pick-and-mix approach through legislation to address additional individual features on other sites - such as banning livestreaming and stranger contact on gaming services, or introducing default protections for 16 and 17 year olds - is unlikely to be implementable and certainly will not be future-proofed, as new features and products emerge that are not covered by these measures.

Moreover, this approach takes the responsibility off platforms for ensuring their products are safe before they are rolled out, which is where - backed by robust regulation and strong enforcement - it should belong. In the meantime, while it is welcome that the Secretary of State has written to Ofcom to set out her expectations about ongoing OSA enforcement, there is a serious risk that this confused direction of travel will only further reduce Ofcom’s ability to enforce its existing obligations as services focus their efforts on lobbying against the new measures, rather than complying with the existing ones.

We are particularly disappointed that the Government sets out no meaningful plans for further policy development work on online safety: there has been no strategic thinking on this in the two years since the Government came into power. Creating new criminal offences and rushing in new laws to ban children from platforms or age-restrict individual features is no substitute for a comprehensive, cross-government approach to digital policy and regulation.

We will continue to work on a cross-harm basis with our partners in the Network to advocate for the OSA to be strengthened and for a systemic, risk-based, outcome-focused legislative and regulatory approach to ensure that online platforms are safe by design and that all users - not just children - can thrive in an online world that is designed for safety, rather than optimised for profit.