On 15 June, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall announced plans to ban under-16s from social media platforms expected to include TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and X, and to require AI 'romantic companion' chatbots to enforce a minimum age of 18, with intimate functions restricted for under-18s across all chatbots. Messaging services such as WhatsApp are excluded.
The government says its approach goes further than Australia's under-16 ban by also curbing features judged particularly harmful to children, including livestreaming and contact from strangers, with protections switched on by default for 16 and 17-year-olds to avoid a 'cliff edge' at 16. Legislation is expected before the UK Parliament by the end of the year, with the first restrictions potentially taking effect in spring 2027.
Researchers at the University of Oxford's Department of Psychiatry, whose work spans children's mental health, the design of AI systems and how young people experience life online, have been weighing up the proposals.
Dr Madeline G. Reinecke is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Collective Moral Development in the Department of Psychiatry (NEUROSEC - Design Bioethics Lab) and the Uehiro Oxford Institute (Philosophical Moral Psychology Lab). Her research examines moral cognition across children, adults and artificial intelligence, including how and when people place trust in AI systems. She works with young people as co-researchers on the safeguarding of human-AI interaction.