The UK government has announced plans to ban children under the age of sixteen from accessing major social media platforms from 2027. The proposal is the latest in a series of measures that have dramatically expanded Britain’s regulation of the internet over the past decade. Because many of the companies affected are American technology firms operating global platforms, Britain’s digital regulations increasingly have international consequences.
Existing and proposed UK regulations include:
- The Online Safety Act, a sweeping online censorship regime established last year, that imposes massive fines and potentially criminal consequences on platforms and executives for failing to censor disfavored content.
- A proposed ban on under-16s accessing major social media platforms, a proposal that would force every adult to subscribe to a digital ID scheme to prove their age.
- Proposals to force private messaging platforms like Signal and WhatsApp to proactively scan user messages, effectively destroying encrypted privacy on those services.
- Government restrictions on VPNs, which currently exist only in authoritarian regimes such as North Korea, Iran, and China.
The Online Safety Act
The foundation of Britain’s modern approach to internet regulation is the Online Safety Act, which came into force in 2023 and is now being implemented by Ofcom. Described by the government as world-leading legislation, it imposes some of the most extensive regulatory obligations placed on online platforms by a democratic country.
The Act establishes a statutory duty of care requiring online services to assess and mitigate risks faced by their users. Platforms ranging from social media companies and search engines to forums and file-sharing sites must conduct risk assessments, remove illegal content, and introduce measures designed to protect children.
Central to the legislation is mandatory age assurance. Services likely to host content deemed harmful to children must use “highly effective” methods of determining whether users are under eighteen. Rather than relying on self-declared ages, platforms are expected to deploy more robust systems such as facial age estimation, identity document verification or other approved methods.
The legislation also gives Ofcom sweeping enforcement powers. Companies found in breach face fines of up to £18 million or 10 percent of annual global turnover, whichever is greater, while senior managers can face criminal liability for failing to comply with certain statutory information requests.
Because major technology companies operate global products rather than country-specific versions of their services, compliance has required significant engineering changes by firms including Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft and X. The age-assurance systems now being introduced under the Act also provide the technical foundation for newer proposals, including the government’s planned ban on under-16s accessing major social media platforms.
Ofcom immediately used its new powers to target American tech platforms, forcing the messageboard 4chan out of the country and requiring Elon Musk’s X to work with the same “disinformation” researchers that want to destroy his platform.
Banning Under-16s from Social Media
In June 2026, the UK government announced plans to prohibit children under the age of sixteen from accessing major social media platforms from 2027. If implemented, it would represent one of the most significant restrictions on young people’s use of the internet ever introduced in Britain.
The proposed ban is expected to apply to major platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, X and YouTube. Rather than requiring parental consent or limiting specific features, it would prevent under-16s from holding accounts altogether. Alongside the ban, ministers have also discussed restrictions on livestreaming, tighter controls on who can contact children online, and additional protections for users under eighteen.
The proposal relies on the age-assurance systems now being introduced under the Online Safety Act. To enforce the ban, platforms will need reliable methods of determining whether prospective users are under sixteen before allowing them to create or access accounts — effectively a digital ID system that threatens online anonymity.
UK Digital ID Looms As Government Plans Social Media Ban for Under-16s
The significance of the proposal extends beyond social media itself. Age verification was once largely confined to online pornography, but successive legislative proposals have steadily expanded its use across the wider internet. The under-16 ban would mark another major step in that process, requiring mainstream online platforms used by millions of people to determine users’ ages before granting access.
For young people, the policy would affect far more than entertainment. Social media platforms have become important sources of news, educational content, political discussion and online communities, meaning the restrictions would extend to an increasingly significant part of modern public life.
Device-Level Scanning and the Future of Encryption
Britain’s online safety agenda is increasingly influencing the design of the devices people use to access the internet. Earlier this year, Apple announced new child safety features for UK users, including age assurance for child accounts and technology capable of automatically detecting and blurring nude images sent to or received by children through Apple’s communication services.
The measures have drawn criticism from encrypted messaging providers, particularly Signal. Meredith Whittaker, Signal’s President, has repeatedly warned that requirements forcing providers to scan private communications or otherwise weaken end-to-end encryption would fundamentally undermine secure messaging. Signal has consistently maintained that it would rather leave the UK market than compromise its encryption.
This is not the first time the company has threatened to withdraw from Britain. During debates over the Online Safety Act, Signal argued that provisions allowing Ofcom to require the use of accredited technology to detect illegal content could become incompatible with genuinely end-to-end encrypted services. Although the government has said it does not intend to prohibit encryption itself, the dispute has highlighted the growing tension between online safety regulation and secure private communications.
VPN Restrictions
As the UK expands age-verification requirements and online safety obligations, ministers have also begun considering how users might circumvent those restrictions.
In June, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle confirmed that the government was examining measures to prevent children from using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to bypass online safety protections. Speaking before the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, Kyle acknowledged that VPNs have many legitimate uses but said ministers were exploring whether further action would be needed to stop children using them to evade online restrictions.
If the UK passed VPN restrictions, it would place the country in a small club of authoritarian regimes that do so, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Egypt, and Turkey.
No formal proposal has yet been published, but the remarks represent the first indication that the government may seek to regulate the tools used to circumvent online safety measures, rather than simply the measures themselves.
VPNs are widely used by businesses, journalists, activists and ordinary internet users to protect privacy and secure online communications. Any attempt to restrict their use would therefore extend beyond social media or online platforms to technologies that underpin everyday internet access.
Forcing Public Service Content onto Devices and Feeds
Britain’s digital agenda is not only concerned with restricting what people are allowed to see online. Increasingly, it also governs what they must be shown. Over the past two years the government has assembled a legal framework requiring the makers of televisions, streaming devices and, potentially, social media platforms to give guaranteed prominence to content produced by the BBC and other public service broadcasters.
The foundation of the UK’s approach is the Media Act 2024, which extends older “prominence” rules, originally written for traditional television guides, to internet-connected devices. Under the Act, the operators of the most widely used connected TV platforms, including smart TVs, set-top boxes and streaming sticks, must ensure that BBC iPlayer and other designated public service players are carried and given an “appropriate degree of prominence” on their interfaces. Rather than leaving the placement of such content to the device makers or to viewer demand, the law now obliges them to surface it.
In January 2026, Ofcom went further, publishing a draft code of practice for connected TV platforms. Its headline proposal is that the designated public service apps should occupy the first nine tiles of a connected television’s home screen, leaving only three positions for every other service, including the platform’s own. In effect, regulators would dictate the layout of the screen that millions of households see when they switch on the television.
In June 2026, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport published a Green Paper, Watch this Space, proposing to extend these prominence requirements to social media and video-sharing platforms. Under the proposals, the platforms operated by major technology firms would be required to make news from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and other “trustworthy providers” prominent and easy to find within users’ feeds and search results. The same logic that began with television hardware would thereby reach into the ranking of algorithmic feeds, with the state effectively designating which news sources platforms must elevate.
As the Foundation for Freedom Online previously revealed, BBC Media Action, the broadcaster’s nonprofit arm, has long been involved in the “counter-disinformation space,” sketching out a plan in 2021 to target “information disorder” including skepticism of climate change and vaccines, and called for regulatory changes to address it. This initiative was bankrolled by U.S. taxpayers via USAID, which provided 8 percent of BBC Media Action’s revenues.
USAID Bankrolled BBC Media Action’s Global Initiative Against ‘Information Disorder’
The Green Paper leaves the meaning of a “trustworthy provider” open, prompting concern from free-expression campaigners that placing such judgements in government hands is open to abuse, particularly when the same label could be denied to outlets a future administration dislikes. Ministers, for their part, justify the measures as a response to misinformation and to changing habits, pointing to figures showing that around three-quarters of younger adults now rely on social media as their main source of news, and to data indicating that YouTube had overtaken the BBC in monthly reach for the first time.
The same paper also raises the prospect of a managed transition to internet-based television in the 2030s or 2040s, in which broadcast access would move entirely online. Taken together, the measures point towards a future in which public broadcast content is woven into the infrastructure of the devices and platforms people use, rather than left to audience choice. Supporters present this as protecting trusted journalism in an era of fragmenting media; critics view it as the state placing its preferred content in front of citizens by law.
Morgan McSweeney and the Centre for Countering Digital Hate
Britain’s expanding digital regulatory agenda has coincided with the growing influence of figures associated with online content moderation and digital harms policy.
Among the most significant is Morgan McSweeney, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff. Before becoming one of the most influential advisers in government, McSweeney helped establish the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an organisation that has become a prominent campaigner for stronger online content moderation and platform regulation.
Transatlantic Censorship Architect Morgan McSweeney Ousted Over Epstein Scandal
Originally established during Labour’s internal conflicts under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the CCDH later expanded its focus to campaigning against what it describes as online hate and misinformation. It has since produced reports targeting major American technology companies, called for platforms to remove or restrict various forms of online content, and become an influential participant in debates over platform governance in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Foundation for Freedom Online has previously examined McSweeney’s role in the organisation’s early development, arguing that it provides important context for understanding the current government’s broader approach to internet regulation, including it’s goal to “kill Musk’s Twitter.”
“Kill Musk’s Twitter” – a 2024 goal of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), stated in internal emails obtained by Racket and The Disinformation Chronicle in 2025. Ofcom worked with CCDH in its investigation of X.
Taken individually, each of these measures addresses a different aspect of the digital world—from social media and age verification to encrypted messaging and internet privacy. Together, they illustrate the direction of travel in British digital policy.
Over the past decade, the United Kingdom has steadily expanded the regulation of online platforms, digital services and internet access. As these measures continue to come into force, Britain is likely to remain one of the world’s most closely watched testing grounds for draconian online censorship.
