16 Jun Banning Social Media for Under-16s: The View From Both Sides of My Job

Yesterday’s announcement from Keir Starmer and the government on banning social media for under-16s has been the talk of every parent WhatsApp group I’m in, and honestly, it’s made for a fascinating couple of days to be working in digital marketing too. I sit right in the middle of this one, wearing two hats that don’t always agree with each other, so I wanted to put down some thoughts from both sides.

Why this matters to me personally

I’ve been part of the smartphone-free parenting movement for a while now. My son is only seven, and I’ve hoped, campaigned, even for a world where smart phones simply aren’t a feature of primary or secondary school life. So when the news broke that the UK is going further than almost anywhere else in the world, modelling the ban on Australia’s approach and covering platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube, I felt genuine relief.

I know exactly how addictive these platforms are designed to be, that’s quite literally part of my job. And I know what children can be exposed to, because I’ve seen it myself. As a digital marketer, I regularly search very ordinary, very safe client keywords, and I have still had genuinely obscene, disturbing results returned to me. I’m a forty-something woman who’s spent two decades online and I can navigate that. A child cannot. So from where I’m standing as a mum, this feels like a long-overdue line in the sand.

But it’s not quite as simple as “no phones”

Here’s where it gets more nuanced for our house. My son loves steam trains, and some of his favourite content simply doesn’t exist on kids’ YouTube, so we watch grown-up YouTube together, on the television, as a family activity. That’s not going anywhere for us. He won’t have a phone in his bedroom to scroll YouTube alone, but supervised, shared screen time on a TV is a different thing entirely to a child having their own account on a platform built around algorithmic feeds and infinite scroll.

It’s worth saying the ban itself is about more than just blocking accounts. Alongside the core ban, the government has also announced restrictions on things like livestreaming and stranger contact for under-16s, extending into gaming platforms too, and these protections will apply by default to 16 and 17-year-olds as well, so there isn’t a sudden cliff-edge the day someone turns 16. There’s more detail expected in July on things like overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for under-18s, which I think is the bit that will actually change day-to-day habits the most.

What I’m watching closely is how the responsibility gets split between parents and the tech companies themselves. Hopefully, the UK will have learned from where Australia’s own rollout has run into trouble. The detail will determine whether this is a genuine cultural shift or something that’s relatively easy for a determined 14-year-old to get around.

Now, the marketing hat

This is the part of the announcement that’s had me thinking deeper. In Google Ads, we already have age-bracket targeting that technically starts at 18, in theory, under-18s shouldn’t be served ads at all. In practice, between Google’s own AI-driven systems and Performance Max increasingly making placement decisions on our behalf, the reality has been messier. It’s not the first time I’ve had to manually exclude a client’s ads from appearing against content like Cocomelon, where the audience watching is very obviously not the 25-54 year old demographic the campaign is meant to be reaching (unless, of course, it’s 2am and the adults in the house have given in to “just one more episode”).

My honest take is that this could actually clean advertising up. If platforms can be more confident that under-16s simply aren’t present, then the targeting data marketers rely on becomes more trustworthy, and ad spend stops leaking towards audiences it was never meant for. That’s a genuinely positive outcome for clients, not just for kids.

Where I’m more sceptical is the practical rollout. The legislation is expected to go before Parliament before Christmas, with the protections themselves not coming into force until spring 2027, so there’s a long runway between now and any real change for platforms, advertisers, or families. And with over 116,000 responses to the government’s consultation, and around nine in ten parents backing a ban, there’s clearly public appetite for this to work. Two-thirds of young people themselves also said they’d support restrictions on at least some platforms, which I found genuinely heartening, this isn’t just parents imposing their will from above.

Where I land

I’m sceptical about the mechanics, realistic about the grey areas my own family will still navigate, but genuinely optimistic about the direction. If this is implemented properly, with real teeth behind the age verification, and tech companies actually held to account rather than parents left carrying the whole burden, I think it’s a meaningful step forward. Good for parents, good for the integrity of digital marketing, but most importantly, good for kids who deserve a childhood that isn’t shaped by an algorithm.

I’ll be watching closely, both at home and at work.

— Amanda