British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a ban on social media sites for under-16s as the United Kingdom plans to join a growing list of countries that place online restrictions on children.
According to The Guardian, Starmer said on Monday, June 15, that children aged under 16 will be banned from using a range of social media apps, including Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, to protect them from harmful content and excessive screen time.
However, the world’s biggest technology companies warned Britain’s plans to ban social media for under-16s will push teenagers towards more harmful platforms.
Meta, YouTube and Snapchat came forward to criticize the ban.
A spokesperson for Facebook and Instagram parent-company Meta said, “As we’ve seen in Australia, bans risk isolating teens from online communities and information, and driving them to unregulated alternatives that lack built-in protections and parental controls.”
While YouTube stated, “Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less-safe services.”
Starmer announced the ban at a Downing Street press conference, despite having previously been sceptical about the idea.
Furthermore, Snapchat said, “Because the majority of time spent on Snapchat is in private messaging between friends and family, an outright ban that disconnects teens from those relationships doesn’t make them safer, it may simply push them to less safe platforms.”
Allies say that if Starmer is ousted as prime minister in the coming weeks this will form part of his political legacy.
