The UK government has launched a public consultation into imposing a blanket ban on social media for under-16s. Open Rights Group warns that this would be a damaging and ineffective response to online harms. It would create serious risks to privacy, data protection, and freedom of expression.

Blanket bans mean blanket age-gating

Whether it’s an outright ban or applying film-style age ratings to social media, these proposals would still require widespread age verification. Platforms would have no way to enforce age-based access without forcing users to prove their age.

This would mean millions of 16-17 year olds, as well as adults, being required to hand over additional personal data to private companies to communicate online.

“We already know these systems are risky,” said James Baker, Platform Power and Free Expression Programme Manager at Open Rights Group. “Only last year, sensitive age-verification data collected by Discord was exposed in a breach. Expanding age-gating across the internet would multiply the scale of this risk.”

Despite calls on Government to do so, there is a lack of effective regulation around age-assurance technology. These systems routinely involve identity documents, facial analysis, or inferred profiling. Once collected, this data can be breached, misused, or repurposed, with long-term consequences for both adults’ and children’s privacy and security.

Lords Amendments would ban under 16s from more than social media

One of the Lords’ amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would ban all under 16s from social functions of online games, WhatsApp and Wikipedia as well as what many people might understand as social media. This goes far beyond Australia’s experiment in banning under 16s from social media.

A blanket ban or rigid age-rating system would disproportionately affect marginalised young people and undermine their rights to freedom of expression and participation, as recognised in international human rights law. International conventions also say that children should be consulted when their rights are impacted.

“Shutting young people out of digital public spaces, rather than building ones that work for them is not protection,” said James Baker. “It is exclusion.”

There are better, rights-respecting solutions

Online harms are driven by platform design and business models, not simply by young people’s presence online. Instead of blunt bans, Open Rights Group is calling for reforms that give users real power and choice, including:

• Interoperability, so users can communicate across services and platforms are forced to compete on standards.

• Greater user control over feeds, recommender systems, and moderation.

• Strong enforcement of data protection law for children.

• Limits on profiling and targeted advertising, and greater transparency around how user data is used on platforms.

“Protecting children online should not mean building a surveillance infrastructure for everyone,” said James Baker.

“We need regulation that puts users back in control, not policies that force people to trade their privacy and voice for access to modern life.”