How can media leaders prepare for an under 16 social media ban?
Opinion
If regulation is inevitable, we should use it as an opportunity to create a smarter, safer digital ecosystem. Lisa Morgan assesses the considerations.
Only a few weeks ago, we were discussing the UK’s under-16 social media ban. Now, with a new prime minister, the policy is once again under scrutiny. Andy Burnham has been clear that the commitment remains, describing it as a critical first step that should be delivered with urgency.
As a business dedicated to understanding children and families, we welcome that continuity. Policies affecting young audiences matter, and this is one the industry should engage with thoughtfully rather than simply wait out.
The debate has accelerated rapidly. Following Australia’s landmark legislation, France has become the latest country to tighten restrictions for younger users. There’s no doubt about the direction of travel: The question is no longer whether greater protections are needed, but how we should implement, enforce, and measure them.
Children are not a single audience. Social media is not a single platform
Policymakers, platforms, agencies and advertisers all have a responsibility to recognise those differences. If regulation is inevitable, we should use it as an opportunity to create a smarter, safer digital ecosystem. So what should be our key considerations?
1. Learn from those who have gone before
The UK doesn’t have to guess how this might play out. Australia has already provided a valuable case study.
More than 4.7m accounts have reportedly been deactivated since the legislation came into force. While that appears significant, implementation has been far from straightforward. Teenagers have found ways around age verification through VPNs, false birth dates and shared accounts. Even the Australian Government has described the legislation not as a complete solution, but as the start of a longer-term cultural shift.
That feels like the right lens for the UK. Legislation can influence social norms and expectations, but it is unlikely to eliminate access overnight. Particularly when gaming platforms, messaging services and AI chatbots remain outside its scope.
The lesson isn’t that regulation doesn’t work. It’s that legislation alone was never designed to solve the problem and will take a generation to clearly see the impact.
2. One size doesn’t fit all
For years, we’ve championed the idea that children’s audiences cannot be understood by grouping everyone aged four to sixteen together. Behaviour, maturity, motivations and media habits evolve dramatically across those years. Regulation should recognise that reality.
The same applies to platforms.
Following the announcements regarding UK legislation, we surveyed more than 500 UK parents of children aged four to 15 to understand attitudes towards different services.
More than three in five parents believe TikTok should be included within restrictions. Fewer than one in five say the same about YouTube.
That difference reflects how families experience these platforms.
Parents commonly describe YouTube as a place where children learn, are entertained, and often watch together as a family, particularly at younger ages. TikTok, by contrast, is associated with highly personalised algorithms, individual consumption and concerns around excessive screen time.
Our research also found that many parents of younger children feel little need to actively police YouTube because viewing is already supervised within the home. TikTok demands considerably greater parental intervention.
For policymakers, that poses an important question. Should regulation apply equally across every platform, or should it reflect the different levels of risk, engagement and parental expectation?
3. An opportunity for smarter planning
For advertisers, this conversation shouldn’t simply be viewed through the lens of restriction but as an opportunity to plan better.
For years, campaigns targeting younger audiences often defaulted to a small number of social platforms because they were easy to buy, easy to measure and offered enormous scale. If access changes, it forces marketers to rediscover that effective communication starts with understanding behaviour, not simply following reach.
Children’s media ecosystems remain incredibly rich. Connected TV, gaming, creators, retail media, audio, cinema, schools, family environments and trusted publisher content all play meaningful roles at different ages and life stages.
Brand safety around younger audiences shouldn’t wait for legislation to force the issue. Contextual targeting, careful platform selection and content that’s actually built with a young audience in mind are things we can and should be doing anyway.
So what does the future have in store?
The implications may extend beyond children. Legislation of this kind has the potential to reshape family attitudes towards digital media. As parents become increasingly conscious of their own screen habits, and the role they play in modelling behaviour, the environments in which families choose to spend time and attention may begin to evolve too.
It could also change how culture itself spreads. Younger audiences have long acted as culture’s earliest adopters and amplifiers, helping ideas, trends and brands travel rapidly into the mainstream. If that participation becomes more fragmented, marketers may need to think less about chasing a single viral moment and more about creating multiple routes into culture through a multichannel approach.
Perhaps most importantly, this sits within a broader change in how we think about digital media. As regulation increases across children’s safety, privacy and online accountability, where a brand appears may become just as important as how many people it reaches. Context, trust and quality of attention are becoming stronger drivers of effectiveness alongside scale.
The brands that thrive won’t be searching for loopholes. They’ll be using their time ahead of the ban to test, learn and broaden their understanding of children’s lives, building campaigns around genuine moments of attention and influence, rather than platform dependency.
Ultimately, legislation is only one part of the solution. The greatest opportunity lies in combining evidence-based regulation with genuinely safer platform design and smarter planning. That means age-appropriate experiences, fewer addictive mechanics, stronger age assurance, greater transparency and better digital literacy for both children and parents.
Success shouldn’t be measured by the number of accounts removed. But rather by whether children’s online experiences genuinely improve and, over time, whether we see a lasting generational shift in attitudes towards, and behaviours around, social media use.
Lisa Morgan is managing director at Generation Media. Read her monthly column for The Media Leader on the first Thursday of each month.