LONDON — The British government announced plans on Wednesday for 16- and 17-year-olds to face a voluntary overnight social media curfew, its latest attempt to reduce online harm for children.
It said that features that can keep users scrolling for longer, such as videos that automatically play one after another, will also be switched off by default for older teenagers.
Critics questioned the effectiveness of the measures given that the teenagers will be able to switch off these default settings.
The planned restrictions come a month after the government unveiled a social media ban for under-16s, which is expected to cover platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, but not messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal, from next spring.
The measures, which are one of the final acts of the government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, will have to be legislated upon. It is widely believed that his expected successor, Andy Burnham, will follow through with the plans.
Kanishka Narayan, the U.K.’s online safety minister, downplayed talk that teenagers would just turn off optional social media curfews, saying it is a “disservice” to them to suggest they would.
He pointed to a recent pilot program involving more than 300 teenagers and parents across the U.K. that saw social media usage drop dramatically overnight as well as helping improve sleep and concentration.
“In October, for example, some platforms introduced these defaults of this sort — 90%-plus teenagers said to us that they’ve maintained those defaults as well,” he told Sky News. “And so the evidence base is clear, the motivation is very clear, and I wouldn’t do the disservice to teenagers of saying they’re all going to switch it off.”
The NSPCC, the U.K.’s leading children’s charity, said the proposals will go some way to improving the experiences of young people on social media but that they will not be enough on their own.
“Unless they’re followed up with further, stronger measures they will be a sticking plaster that fails to address the addictive design features which are driving high screentime and undermining children’s wellbeing,” said NSPCC chief executive Chris Sherwood.
Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, said the move was a “positive step” as young people want to try to cut down social media use but find it hard.
“I want to know more about how the policies, such as a curfew, will be delivered and will be watching closely to make sure they are effective,” she said.
