In this photo illustration a 13-year-old teenage boy looks at an iPhone screen displaying various social media apps on January 12, 2026 in Bath, England.
Matt Cardy | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The U.K. government on Wednesday proposed new measures to protect older teens on social media, including a midnight curfew and a limit to infinite scrolling, as tech giants continue to face scrutiny over online safety.
Teens between the ages of 16 and 17 years old will face a default overnight curfew from midnight to 12 a.m., and addictive features like infinite scrolling and autoplay will be automatically switched off, the government said Wednesday. However, teens will have the option to switch off these settings.
It’s expected to go into force by Spring 2027.
The measures came after a social media restriction trial demonstrated positive results with teens saying an overnight curfew improved sleep and concentration. The trial involved more than 300 teens and parents across the U.K.
The social media trial, which involved more than 300 teens and parents across the U.K., ran for a month and saw teens tested with three different types of interventions, including restricting app use to 15 minutes a day, an overnight curfew between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m., and removing specific social media apps entirely.
It found that participants saw a range of mental health benefits, including improved mood, reduced stress, and better daytime energy. However, they also noted a “social and emotional trade-off,” as social media is central to their interactions with friends who weren’t facing restrictions.
As a result, the overnight curfew was most favoured to balance the health benefits with teens’ social needs.
In June, the outgoing U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a blanket social media ban for teens under the age of 16. It followed Australia becoming the first country in the world to enforce a legal ban in December. The U.K.’s ban would apply to platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and X.
Tech giants are under intense scrutiny as governments worldwide ramp up protections for children on social media. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday that the region will move forward with age restrictions on social media platforms to curb young people’s usage.
Ali Law, TikTok’s director of public policy and government affairs in Northern Europe, defended the platform, saying it’s designed with safety in mind, in a conversation with CNBC’s Karen Tso and Steve Sedgewick on Tuesday.
He pointed out that TikTok had over 50 preset safety settings for anyone under the age of 16, including a one-hour screen time limit and a 10 p.m. screen takeover telling users to take a break.
“All of these are little default aspects, little nudges to make sure that people have a balanced and healthy relationship with our app, because that works in our interests…because if people are using it for too much and are burnt out, they’re not going to get value from it,” Law said on “Squawk Box Europe.”
