UK ministers launch consultation into whether to ban social media for under-16s

Ministers have launched a consultation into whether to ban under-16s from using social media as part of a package of measures designed to curb mobile phone use among young people.Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, announced the consultation on Monday as the government responds to mounting pressure for stricter curbs on social media use for younger teenagers. On Monday afternoon, Esther Ghey, the mother of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey, became the latest high profile figure to add her name to those in support of a ban.The announcement comes as peers prepare to vote on an amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill on Wednesday, which would enact a ban within a year of the bill passing.Keir Starmer, the prime minister, has said he is open to the idea of a ban, but allies say he wants to wait to see more evidence from Australia, where a ban was enacted in December, before making up his mind.Kendall said in a statement: “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.”The consultation will explore a range of options, including whether to introduce a social media age limit, how to enforce such a limit, stopping technology companies accessing young users’ data and limiting addictive tools such as “infinite scrolling”.The government also says it expects every school to be free of mobile phones by default, with Ofsted to include reports on phone use as part of their regular inspections.The move is partly intended to buy the government time before Wednesday, when peers will vote on a proposal by the Conservative peer Lord Nash to set an age limit for social media at 16.Several Labour peers are expected to vote for the amendment, while the Guardian revealed over the weekend that 61 Labour MPs had also written to Starmer to express their support.Nash said on Monday he did not feel the government’s consultation went far enough, and that he would be pushing ahead with his amendment.“This announcement offers nothing for the hundreds of thousands of parents, teachers, medical professionals, senior police officers, national security experts and parliamentarians of all parties who have been calling for a raising of the age limit for social media.“The prime minister must be in no doubt about the strength of feeling on this. The longer we delay, the more children we fail. I continue to urge all peers to back my amendment on Wednesday which would begin to end the catastrophic harm being done to a generation.”The government’s announcement came hours after Ghey wrote to Starmer explaining in detail how she felt her daughter’s eating disorder and self-harm had been exacerbated by TikTok influencers with whom she had become obsessed.Ghey joined eight other sets of bereaved parents in calling for the government to back Nash’s amendment, which they said “sends an important and unambiguous message that social media is not appropriate for children under the age of 16”.She wrote: “Brianna had a social media addiction and struggled with her mental health from the age of 14. She developed an eating disorder and was self-harming, and all of this was significantly exacerbated by the harmful content she was consuming online.”Ghey added: “I was constantly having heated conversations with Brianna, who became determined that she wanted to be both TikTok famous and a sex worker.“Alongside this, I was in constant fear about who Brianna might be speaking to online. I tried to monitor her phone through spot checks, but she was able to hide things from me very easily.”Brianna was murdered in 2023 in Warrington, Cheshire, by two teenagers in a brutal attack partly motivated by her transgender identity.Her mother later described how she had become obsessed with social media in the months before her death, accessing content related to anorexia and self-harm.Brianna had cultivated a friendship with one of her killers, who at one point tried to poison her with ibuprofen, telling her it was MDMA. That girl had also been spending time in parts of the dark web, looking at websites that featured live abuse.The prime minister said at a press conference on Monday: “I think we need to do more to protect children and that’s why we’re looking at a range of options and saying that no options are off the table. We’re obviously looking at what’s happened in Australia – something I have discussed with the Australian prime minister.”