Social Media: Ban for Under-16s

Anna Sabine Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. Let us be honest: for far too long, tech companies have profited obscenely from addictive algorithms and harmful content aimed at children here in Britain. These are not British companies, but they have become absurdly powerful—probably more powerful than any Government. Generations of young people are paying the price, and we have a mental health crisis. We can all see that.

This is not random; it is happening for a reason. Social media has become almost unavoidable for people growing up. They are not making a choice. As one of my colleagues said, there is no choice—they have to be on it. Young people in the UK spend an average of more than four hours a day on social media. That means that most of their free time is spent staring at a screen. We also have a mental health crisis—I think they are linked. This is fundamentally changing what life looks like, and how young people see themselves, build friendships and form opinions and world views.

The consequences are apparent all around us. The incredible rise in diagnosed and undiagnosed anxiety is just startling. I had no experience of it until becoming an MP and visiting schools, where I was absolutely blown away by conversations with teachers and parents. The scale is off the charts. It is much more common among girls and people with a disability. Young people regularly describe feeling like they have no control over what they see online. Again, there is no choice here. They are being sent these things for hours and hours every day and deep into the night.

In the Government’s consultation this summer, nine in 10 parents backed a social media ban for under-16s. Two thirds of young people agreed that under-16s should not be allowed to use at least some social media platforms. That is not surprising at all, given what I have seen in schools in the last couple of years. Every time I visit schools in Plymouth, teachers tell me about the impact it is having, describing levels of mental health distress unlike anything ever seen before.

Students themselves tell me they want help getting off these platforms. I always ask for a show of hands: “If no one else was on this platform, would you miss it?” For most people, the answer is no—they are only on it because everyone else is on it. They do not want to be on it. I acknowledge that some would disagree with that, including around 400 of my constituents who signed this petition, but they are in the minority.

We know from whistleblowers inside these social media companies that they have known for years and years that these harms were coming. It is not as though they did nothing about it; they have done something about it—they have deliberately hidden it, over and over again. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told our colleagues in the US Congress that the company’s leadership knew how to make platforms safer but refused to act,

“because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”

There is no reason to think that any of these companies will do anything different ever again. They are companies—they are trying to make money.

We cannot put the wellbeing of our nation at the mercy of profit-making organisations, especially ones that reward addiction and exploitation. I am delighted that this year the Government announced decisive action to protect children from social media. I am extremely grateful for the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and the Minister for Artificial Intelligence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Kanishka Narayan), for getting that over the line.

I am also extremely grateful to Labour colleagues who signed a letter I organised to the then Prime Minister urging him to take action. A week after that, he did indeed launch the consultation, which has now led to this decision from Government, so I thank everyone who signed that letter. Government now have to implement, and the question is how they do it.

There is a duty to protect children, and I am so pleased that we are finally going to do that. There is also a duty to allow children access to the benefits of the internet and the online world. Many of my colleagues have spoken very eloquently about that today. How do we do that? A 15-year-old who wants to go on YouTube to learn French or learn the guitar should be able to do that, so there is a challenge for Government on how they do a ban. Am I suggesting that they should just trust the tech companies? No. But surely there is a world in which we are nuanced enough for Government to get a legally binding, written assurance from platforms to provide services that are not included in the ban. Surely there is a world where we are agile enough to be able to react and say, “You said you were going to do this. You have not done what you said you were going to do. You are now included in the ban,” without having to do primary legislation.

I am super conscious that I grew up benefiting from YouTube. I learned the guitar on YouTube. I do not know how I would have learned it otherwise. I would have had to pay for many lessons. I do not think it is fair to tell the next generation that they cannot have those opportunities, so there is a challenge for Government. It is not as simple as just enacting this ban. It is about working out how we carry on giving access to those platforms. Those are tough conversations with big companies.

On age verification, there are countless ways to verify someone’s age without handing over sensitive personal information. I know that some parts of the political agenda argue that any online regulatory action from the Government creates a privacy problem. The burden should not be on Government to do that. The burden should be on the tech companies themselves to find and implement solutions. They know all our information anyway. Those tech companies 100% know our ages. They have some of the brightest engineers in the world. Parliament and Government should set the rules, and they should comply with them.

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

Does the hon. Member have any examples of how the age of a child could be proved if that child had never been on social media? How would a tech company that, theoretically, would not know their information, be able to verify the child’s age without effectively using some form of digital ID by the back door?

[Fred Thomas]

I take the hon. Member’s point. The scale of what those companies know about us—whether we want to acknowledge that or not—really does not correspond to whether we have put our age into an online form or not. We can live in a world where we pretend they do not know that about us and our children, or we can live in the real world where they do know it, and we should just acknowledge that. It is not an invasion of privacy to acknowledge that because it has already happened. To get away from that would be a much bigger debate—not about restricting some aspects of social media for under-16s, but a much bigger conversation around the internet. I am not saying that I endorse it, but frankly that ship has sailed.

I know people have concerns about the experience in Australia. Clearly, many young people are still using social media. I accept that no system is going to be perfect. Young people will find a way around restrictions. That happens with alcohol. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), who is not in her place just now, alluded to the fact that young people still drink alcohol illegally. They smoke cigarettes, do other activities like not wear a seatbelt, and they probably break the law or get around restrictions in some way. That does not mean that we should just throw bans out the window.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I thank all hon. Members in this Chamber; I found myself nodding along extensively during other Members’ contributions.

I absolutely support banning children from accessing harmful social media. The Liberal Democrats have long called for decisive action in this space. The Government joined us in those calls earlier this year, announcing proposals for a social media ban, but it has been many months since the initial announcement, and we are still not entirely sure what to expect. That uncertainty over what a possible ban will look like may be driving many of the concerns of those who signed this petition. What we know so far is that the Government have plans for an Australian-style ban; not only is that vague, but the Liberal Democrats have concerns that an Australian-style ban will ultimately fail in its role to reduce the harms faced by children online.

As we have heard from other hon. Members, after a few months of the Australian ban, early data suggests that it has had a limited impact on prohibiting young people from accessing social media. On top of that, the Molly Rose Foundation found that among children aged 12 to 15 who had social media accounts before the ban came in, more than half said that the ban had made no difference to their online safety. I would add that, while my children are too old to be affected by the ban, I was often a very busy and tired single mother while they were being raised and using social media, and I totally understand the points being made about the possible unfairness and social justice issues with a blanket ban.

This is important because, as we know, the message of this petition is not that children should keep access to harmful content; it is that a ban could cut young people off from safe spaces. For vulnerable children, online communities can often be a lifeline. A blanket ban risks cutting children off from that support. If the Australian evidence is anything to go by, the Government’s proposals could take away those positives without making the online world any safer.

A few weeks ago, I met pupils from a local primary school, Peasedown St John, here in Parliament, and they shared similar concerns. In the Q&A session with a class of six and seven-year-olds, the first question was: “Are you going to ban social media?” When I asked what they thought, they told me, in six and seven-year-old terms, that they wanted inappropriate content restricted, but that they still wanted to use educational platforms. Even at that age, they recognise that different platforms carry different levels of harm, and I must admit that I agree with them.

This is exactly the nuanced approach the Liberal Democrats have been calling for. Unlike an Australia-style ban, the Liberal Democrats would assess and regulate platforms based on the harms they cause, with film-style age ratings reflecting that harm. Platforms that cause the most harm would be closed to children—but, if a tech company did the work to redesign the platform, removing addictive algorithms and harmful content, that form of social media could possibly be accessible. Unlike a fixed ban, that would give tech companies a reason to change. It would preserve safe spaces for young people to talk online and make safety part of the design of these platforms rather than an afterthought.

While we are considering safe spaces, I appreciated the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) that there has been a deterioration in alternative spaces—practical, real-life spaces—for young people to go to over the past 10 or 20 years. I notice that the excellent campaign group Make Space for Girls has been making the point that specifically for young women and girls—particularly as the nights draw in—it is unclear where they will be going to spend their time. The hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) also made the point that rural communities particularly face this challenge. As someone who represents a semi-rural community, I know that many young people simply do not have anywhere to go if they are not going to be on their phones. I am not saying that that makes it right that they are on their phones, but it poses a challenge when that phone use is suddenly cut off.

The Liberal Democrats are also clear that protecting children online should not come at the expense of privacy. Several constituents have asked me to attend this debate; again, they are not in favour of children accessing harmful content, but their concern is that a ban may effectively require a form of digital ID to be enforceable. The Liberal Democrats have always criticised plans for mandatory digital ID, and we will properly scrutinise any regulation of social media to make sure both that it is effective and that it safeguards personal privacy.

I am wholeheartedly in support of a ban on harmful social media, but I think that this debate has allowed us to raise important questions about what a ban should look like. I will therefore finish with a few questions for the Minister. Do the Government believe that the best way forward is still a harms-based approach to banning social media? Can we still expect to see a ban by spring 2027? If so, could the Minister lay out exactly what we can expect to see, and confirm that any regulation will always prioritise privacy and that the House will have the opportunity to scrutinise any proposals?

[Dr Arthur]

Surely any legislation should prioritise the safety of children rather than privacy?

[Anna Sabine]

The hon. Member is absolutely right—that was poorly worded. I should have said, “Alongside the safety of children, we should be prioritising privacy.” I thank him for allowing me to make that clarification.

Finally, on 8 September, the Government also announced legislation to enforce device and app-level restrictions to stop children taking and sharing nude photos of themselves. Could the Minister tell us when we will see that come into force?

The Liberal Democrats want to protect young people from online harm. We believe that the only way to do that successfully is through a harms-based ban on social media. I hope that the Government will today agree.