Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces

Britain’s plan to ban under-16s from major social media has landed like a digital hand grenade in the comments. Prime Minister Keir Starmer says apps like TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, X and even YouTube could be off-limits for younger teens, with more limits coming for livestreams and chatting to strangers in games. That last bit barely got a look-in, because the crowd instantly locked onto the biggest shocker: YouTube? Really? For many readers, that was the plot twist. One commenter said YouTube only got dragged into the mess because of Shorts, basically blaming bite-size scroll videos for turning one of the internet’s biggest learning tools into political collateral damage.

And then the arguments got spicy. Some people asked the brutally practical question: how on earth do you enforce this without parents doing all the work? Others were even more suspicious, wondering if this is really a child safety plan or a backdoor push to make everyone prove who they are online before using basic services. That privacy panic is already bubbling.

There was also a big “can Australia confirm?” energy running through the thread, with users looking over at the country that already did an under-16 ban and asking whether it actually worked or just created chaos. So the community mood is a messy cocktail of support, skepticism, and full-on side-eye. Everyone agrees something is wrong online for kids; they just can’t agree whether this fix is bold, doomed, or the start of an internet ID soap opera.