It is rare in an age of increasing political polarization that right-wing figures like Elon Musk and left-wing charities like Amnesty International agree on anything, but both are against the United Kingdom’s plan to ban under-16s from using social media.
Both sides of the political divide warn of the danger such bans pose to fundamental freedoms, particularly free speech and privacy. Their agreement highlights once again the pressure the establishment is under from both left and right and its increasingly desperate bid to control the narrative online.
The move by the ruling Labour Party had been in the pipeline for some time and was finally announced on 15 June. It follows in the footsteps of Australia, which last year became the first country in the world to introduce a blanket ban on social media for under-16s.
When the UK’s legislation comes into force in spring 2027, apps including TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram will become inaccessible to millions of children, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced.
His government is yet to release the full list of platforms affected, but said YouTube, Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, would also be included.
The news has met with a very mixed reaction. While some campaigners for online safety welcomed it and the Conservative Party leadership indicated its support, criticism has mounted from both the left and the right, including from politicians, political commentators, non-governmental organizations and technology companies.
Government Censorship
On the right, X’s owner Elon Musk posted on his platform that the “censorship law is a wolf in sheep’s clothing”, stating that the “real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone”.
While US President Donald Trump has not responded, British ministers are already lobbying to avert a backlash, as it is well known that the Trump administration is concerned about the trajectory of UK and European efforts to regulate social media more strictly.
US Vice President JD Vance has previously warned that Britain should not go down the “dark path” of losing free speech and has repeatedly criticized the nation’s Online Safety Act, which is meant to keep children from seeing harmful content online.
The US embassy in the UK said earlier this month that America believes “an open internet is essential to the preservation of free speech”, adding that regulations could “impose disproportionate compliance burdens on American companies”.
Instead, the embassy encouraged parents to manage their kids’ privacy settings, including time control preferences, while avoiding official restrictions.
Digital ID
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK and one of the most prominent right-wing voices in Britain, was equally circumspect in his criticism of Labour’s social media ban.
While Farage saw good intentions behind the effort to tackle online safety for children, he argued it is “unlikely to work given the mass adoption of VPNs” and warned that it will mean the introduction of digital ID “via the back door”.
So while right-wing critics broadly agree that children’s safety is an issue that needs to be addressed, they also highlight the fundamental rights at stake, including privacy and free speech.
This view is largely echoed by voices on the left, with far-left NGO Amnesty International putting out a statement criticizing the ban for “treating children as the problem”, rather than tackling the social media companies themselves.
Threat to Children’s Privacy
Amnesty also noted the threat the ban poses to children’s privacy and their ability to access alternative viewpoints and share their own opinions.
While safety is a problem, social media is where “many young people learn, connect with friends, find support, organise around issues they care about and make their voices heard”, said Kerry Moscogiuri, chief executive of Amnesty International UK.
Some 42 British-based children’s rights and online safety campaigners signed an open letter issued by the internet safety NGO the Molly Rose Foundation, criticizing the “blunt” instrument of a blanket ban and saying it will “fail” to protect children.
The Molly Rose Foundation released research in April that found that 61% of children under the age of 16 were still accessing the sites after Australia introduced its social media ban.
Instead, the open letter continues, such bans distract from what the charities say are government and tech company failings to enforce existing legislation aimed at making life online safer for children.
Fundamental Rights
As these samples show, both sides of the political divide are broadly in agreement on the reality of online safety issues for children – but both are also against the introduction of blanket bans due to the threats they present to fundamental rights.
Where they disagree is on how the issue is to be addressed. For instance, the US embassy placed the emphasis on parents, Nigel Farage suggested introducing devices for children with more limited access capabilities, while Amnesty and the charities’ open letter encouraged more targeted and aggressive regulation of social media companies.
Given that there is broad agreement that social media bans are not going to work, the question arises of why governments continue to pursue them, with France, Ireland and Spain all indicating their intention to follow in the footsteps of Britain and Australia.
One obvious answer is that, as a survey from British pollster YouGov shows, bans are popular with parents. Almost four-fifths of Britons (78%) support such a ban. However, the picture quickly becomes more complicated, as parents split over whether the ban will be effective, while a majority of the general public believe the bans will not work (59%).
Significantly, while support for regulation is high, research from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) shows very few (15%) trust government ministers to decide which platforms should be banned, slightly behind technology companies (16%).
The IPPR's study also shows that the public is split as to whether they prefer tighter regulation (39%) or an outright ban (44%), although parents' preference is for a ban instead of regulation (54% to 36%).
So while parents are concerned about the negative effects of social media and agree that regulatory measures are needed, support for outright bans is not as clear-cut as headlines make it seem, while few trust the government to carry them out.
Controlling Online Spaces
It must be borne in mind as well that social media bans are not isolated moves. They occur in a political ecosystem critics say is increasingly intolerant of online freedoms, seeking to introduce digital IDs, control the use of security software like virtual private networks (VPNs) and even regulate the types of political speech people are allowed to utter online.
These moves also come at a time when the established parties are increasingly under pressure from both the right and the left across Europe.
In France, there is the prospect of a direct run-off for the country’s highest office between parties traditionally viewed as far-right and far-left; in Britain, support for the Conservatives and Labour is collapsing in the face of Reform and the Green Party; in Germany, the AfD goes from strength to strength in the polls, while The Left is increasingly polling strongly among the young.
It is against this backdrop that criticisms of social media bans from both the left and the right emerge. As opponents highlight, social media are key platforms for the dissemination of alternative viewpoints and the formation of new political communities.
In this light, social media bans are another sign of how established political parties, under pressure from the left and right, are moving to regulate the platforms most frequently used to disseminate alternative viewpoints.
