Gov Intend to Restrict Social Media for Under 16s Even Without Full UK Ban
The government’s Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has revealed that – regardless of the outcome from their current consultation on a proposed internet Social Media ban for children under the age of 16 (here) – they will still “impose some form of age or functionality restrictions” even if they stop short of a full ban.
At present the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (CWSB) looks highly likely to make it into law with an amendment that effectively gives ministers the power to implement a ban in the future, albeit with the exact approach still being somewhat dependent upon the outcome of the Government’s related consultation (here).
However, the Education Secretary has stressed the importance of making sure that, whatever they decide, actually “works“, which is a particularly difficult thing to achieve given the diversity and complexity of the internet (i.e. there are many ways to get around Age Verification measures). Not to mention the risk of pushing younger users into underground groups and services, away from the big social media platforms.
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Equally, making access to common online services too restrictive could inhibit its use by adults and risks significant unintended consequences, particularly if restrictive rules are applied to website and online services of all sizes with user-to-user platforms (e.g. smaller sites / forums and services often have no viable way of adding Age Verification). The result could be censorship by the backdoor of excessive legal liability.
At the same time many adults may be uncomfortable with having their access restricted from accessing communication / chat services until such time as they agree to share their personal biometric or financial data with often unknown, unfamiliar and unregulated third-party Age Verification organisations.
Olivia Bailey, Junior Education Minister, told the Commons (BBC News):
“Let us be clear: the status quo cannot continue. We are consulting on the mechanism and that is the right thing to do.
But we are clear that under any outcome we will impose some form of age or functionality restrictions for children under 16.
I can also confirm that consideration of restrictions such as curfews will be in addition not instead of this.”
Bailey added that the government is also seeking to tackle addictive features and harmful algorithmically-driven content (e.g. endless scrolling), although she acknowledged that it could take another year or more before such changes in regulation are formally introduced after the CWSB achieves Royal Assent (becomes law).
All of this is before we even touch on the potentially far-reaching and unintended consequences of potentially enforcing age verification on Virtual Private Networks (VPN), which are also legitimate tools for businesses, journalists and to help protect people (security) when abroad or on public networks etc. Many such VPNs can be deeply integrated into modern protection and network optimisation systems, often acting seamlessly in the background, thus a blanket requirement risks being extraordinarily disruptive.
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The reality is that, whatever the government decides, children who go seeking access to such systems and content will always find a way to circumvent any measures that are introduced – just as they always have done. Instead, it often ends up being the innocent and harmless online services and security systems that could be hurt the most by the sledgehammer approach to age-gated internet access.
So far many questions remain unanswered on this topic, which makes it difficult to know what the impacts will be before we have the detail. The only certainty is that MPs are historically pretty poor at understanding how the internet works under the hood, which often results in problems when it comes to implementation.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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It should also be said the legislation is not limited to ‘user-to-user’ services it gives the power to ministers to require age verification for ANY internet service whatsoever or any feature of any internet service. No justification is needed, there are no limits on the power. It in effect means that ministers can ban any internet service at any time for any reason unless that internet service has the resources to implement age verification and enough users who trust it enough to hand over their ID… Something you should never do.
The most frustrating thing about all of this… The government’s trial is teaching parents how to use parental controls in order to simulate a social media ban and other restrictions like curfews. They are so close to getting it. Never been one for conspiracy theories really but when they obviously know this solution is effective and doesn’t have all the privacy downsides for adults, you have to wonder what their real motives are. It’s hard to dismiss it as ignorance.
Apple/Google needs to save us from this dilemma so we can use their on-device face recognition tech to reliably and anonymously send a simple 0 (No) or 1 (Yes) with their own servers to whomever is interested. This is the only solution I am willing to accept.
The only solution I am willing to accept is parents looking after their children, and not the state.
Well done Retro, someone with the guts to call it out.
When I say this, people say you can’t keep an eye on your kids all the time. That is true, but there are ways on phones to limit their use.
Someone I know, done it to their sons phone and told him if he tried to get around it then he would end up having a dumb phone. Never going to be 100%, can get social media and see things in other places.
I realise it is more difficult now than it was when I was a child, all my parents had to look out for was magazines on the top shelf of a newsagent, oh yeah, and we had the page 3 girl in the sun.
As time went by, we had porn videos, did not have any of them in the house or dirty mags either.
Parents just don’t seem to try, here is a phone, do what you want and now with cheap data, it is worse than before. Remind me of the days when parents used to push kids outside to get out of their way, no doubt some are still like it.
You see what some parents are like when you work in retail.
IMO, a parent who gives a child a device without enabling parental controls should be treated in the same way as a parent who gives their child a sharp knife to play with. It’s neglect. What the government can do is work with device makers to make parental controls super easy to use, could be a standardised user interface, on by default, and then run a big education campaign to inform parents it is their responsibility, what they need to do, and the consequences of not doing it. With properly configured parental controls the kid will not be using workarounds like VPNs either, they simply will not be able to install them.
Precisely. Tech companies and ISPs already provide all the tools necessary to give parents the ability to control their child’s online experience.
If a parent refuses to take advantage of these tools, that’s unfortunate but.. why does that become my problem?
Impulsive, kneejerk reactions from people who have no idea about anything they’re legislating over.
Good to see the government are looking to ban the addictive features, which is a much better route than requiring ID.
Better parental controls that reliably work would also be good. I’m technical and I could get the time limits working in one OS for our first child, however the second child would the same settings work? Nope. I’ve had to switch to using the router’s controls instead.
What are the chances other parents are able to do the same?
Any credible party wanting to save the country needs to repeal all the damage being done by these power hungry authoritarians. No digital id, no cbdc, no censorship
People really don’t realize the stage things are when the EU and many countries are literally blocking political opinions
Eva Vlaar was banned from travelling to the UK because she criticized the supreme labour leader. Kanye West got banned when his concert got sold out in an hour. Valentina Gomez a US political candidate got banned for opinions
The gov simultaneously thinks kids should vote but they aren’t mature enough to navigate the web for information
You probably could have come up with some better and more balanced examples than one or two of those, where a few of the “opinions” you’re talking about actually crossed into sick and twisted racism, which is rightly illegal in the UK. Freedom of expression does not extend to hate speech and it’s been that way for quite a while, thankfully.
Sorry but when criticizing immigration policy is “hate speech” then you lost the plot. Especially when social media is literally compelled to block people in the EU from immigration critical content
Without the ability to even talk about core government policy then democracy is finished. Socrates taught us this 2400 years ago
Was thinking more along the lines of Kanye West, although Valentina Gomez has also made some fairly overtly racist remarks. Reminder, it’s illegal.
Those people are not just criticising immigration policy. They are pushing fundamentally racist points of view such as ‘remigration’. That said Eva Vlaardingerbroek’s speech at Tommy Robinson’s event was seemingly not deemed illegal and was allowed to happen despite its content. So there is a bit of a difference between free speech within the country and allowing foreign rabble rousers in to push conspiracy theories and racist ideology.
Very unhelpful to be linking stuff like this to the debate around age verification. The government have already tried to dismiss those in opposition to their policies as being ‘on the side of predators’. You’re making it easy for them to avoid addressing the real issues.
@Sam, I absolutely get you. Many people don’t get it, or refuse to believe it could be happening. I would go as far to say democracy is already finished, we’ve just been living under the illusion of it. Controlling channels of communication for everyone is of course the end goal, its about protecting children today, tomorrow the argument will be about needing to protect adults.
Friendly reminder that saying something is illegal doesn’t actually make it so.
Calling a political opinion racist is just an authoritarian tactic to censor the opinion and ram in the agenda. Even reporting on atrocities is being hidden. How many people even know about the horrible Dutch experiment where they housed college girls with “asylum seekers”?
Kanye Wests music is still available to be played everywhere freely. If it was so dangerous to society then why don’t they ban it? The politicians are the real gold diggers
Good thing the US has the 1A. The lawyer safeguarding 4chan from ofcom money extortion Preston Byrne has created a 1a style framework fully compatible with British law. Just needs a political party that actually advocates for freedom to adopt it
Well said Lister.
Good. Some kids were kicking a grannies door in yesterday and filming it – no doubt for tiktok – take that away and they won’t do it