Overview
- The UK announced on Wednesday that 16- and 17-year-olds will have a default overnight curfew from midnight to 6 a.m. and that autoplay and infinite-scroll features will be switched off by default for that group, with users able to opt out.
- Those new measures will sit alongside the ban on major social platforms for under-16s that the government set out in June and that is planned to take effect in spring 2027.
- An expert panel convened by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen recommended restricting unsupervised social media use for children under 13 and the European Commission said it will prepare legislative proposals after the summer.
- Policymakers face a hard trade-off on enforcement because age checks that are strong enough to stop evasions — such as ID uploads, payment checks or facial age estimation — create privacy and access risks, and early evidence from Australia’s December 2025 under-16 ban shows high rates of circumvention.
- The package also expands to AI, with UK ministers proposing mandated breaks for under-18s and tighter controls on chatbots that give unverified mental-health advice, and campaigners say the real test will be parliamentary detail, regulator powers and how firms implement verification without pushing youth to less regulated spaces.