Important References:
- Growing up in the online world: progress statement — [ PDF | Archived ]
- 4-page summary of the report — [ PDF | Archived ]
- June progress statement: summary of evidence, methodology, and organisations who responded to the consultation — [ PDF | Archived ]
On June 15, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the UK government will ban children from accessing social media and enforce stricter age-gating mechanisms to ensure under-16s are protected from the harms and risks of social media and the internet. You can read MediaNama’s reporting of the announcement and the subsequent press conference here.
Following this announcement, the UK government released some of the responses it received through its public consultation process. Here are some of the key details from their public consultation report.
How many responses did the UK consultation receive? The UK government ran the public consultation for about 85 days, from 2 March 2026 to 26 May 2026. The distribution of respondents is as follows:
- Children: (at least) 14,000 — 12.05%
- Parents: (more than) 54,000 — 46.46%
- Organizations: 600 — 0.51%
- Total: 1,16,211
Interestingly, the short summary of the full report often cites children’s responses before outlining the government’s regulatory approach.
Key Findings:
- Over 60% of children support some age restrictions: “Two-thirds of children who responded to the consultation told us that they would support age restrictions for under 16s on at least some social media.”
- 90% of parents support the complete ban: “90% of parents told us they would support under-16s not being allowed on social media.”
Children who responded said they supported restrictions on the following features:
- Sending explicit images (63%),
- connecting to strangers (49%) and,
- livestreaming (45%).
Therefore, the UK government says that even gaming applications cannot offer these features to under-16s, and platforms can’t enable them automatically. These features should be accessible only if the user voluntarily enables them.
How many people thought social media has more benefits to offer than risks?
- Children: “40% of children thought the benefits outweighed the risks.”
- Parents: “Only 11% of respondents to the parents’ consultation agreed that the benefits of being on social media outweighed the risks.”
Social media benefits vs harms: More than 25,000 respondents who answered this question identified the following as the benefits and harms of social media and of children’s access to those platforms.
- Social connection and learning: The reported benefits are connection, information, learning, education, and friendship as primary positives, alongside communication, community support, and access to interest-based content and entertainment.
- Harms center on mental health and exposure to risks: The dominant concerns are…
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