UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a blanket ban on social media for children under the age of 16, calling it a “line in the sand” to protect children’s mental health and safety.
The legislation builds upon similar restrictions passed in Australia but introduces even tighter regulations.
However, while the government promises a safer digital environment, experts on the ground argue that a top-down ban misses the complex reality of how young people actually use technology.
Among the leading voices urging caution is Jason Michaelides, founder of Orbiri—a parent-founded technology company currently running a pilot across schools in London and the South East to test community-powered approaches to screen time.
Michaelides warns that targeting a handful of high-profile apps is a start, but social media is just the tip of the iceberg. Without a plan for the much bigger ecosystem of platforms, messaging apps and gaming spaces that sit outside any named shortlist, children are no safer than they were yesterday. The only thing that’s actually working, and that Orbiri is seeing first-hand through its pilot, is collective action: schools, families and children setting shared boundaries together.
“Social media is just the tip of the iceberg. Banning it is a start, but without a plan for everything underneath, children are no safer than they were yesterday” Michaelides commented.Social media platforms are one piece of a much bigger ecosystem keeping children glued to screens and families locked in daily battles they were never equipped to win alone. Children don’t live their digital lives just on TikTok and Snapchat. They move between messaging platforms, gaming spaces, live streaming and every other corner of the digital world that sits outside whatever list the government will publish. The harm is serious, it’s well-documented, and is deeper than Instagram and TikTok – the way content is relentlessly consumed and the lost opportunity cost of so many hours goes far beyond a few named apps. We know this because we’re hearing it directly from the parents and children taking part in Orbiri’s pilot in schools across London and the South East.
What will actually work isn’t a ban handed down from above to individual children. It’s collective action: schools, families and children working together around shared boundaries. Because when children are part of the decision and move together with their friends on safer smartphone usage, the rules don’t feel like punishment. They feel like something they own, like something everyone just does. And that changes everything.
Real enforcement can’t be left to the platforms that profit from keeping children engaged, or to exhausted parents fighting this battle household by household. And any approach that stops at legislation, without the longer-term framework needed to build genuine digital resilience for when restrictions eventually lift, isn’t solving the problem. It’s delaying it.
So while Starmer said a lot of the things that parents have been waiting to hear today, the problem is that’s all he did. Words without a plan aren’t a policy. They’re a press release. We welcome the ambition. Now show us the plan.”