The United Kingdom government is planning a default online curfew between midnight and 6 am for 16- and 17-year-olds. But here’s the catch: the curfew is optional, meaning that families can switch it off whenever they want.
Along with the curfew, the British government announced that addictive design features meant to increase engagement and scrolling time, such as autoplay and infinite scrolling, will also be switched off by default for the 16-17 age group.
The fact that teens themselves can override the restrictions has critics worried about how efficient these bans will be at addressing the health concerns that come with addictive social media use, like poor sleep, depression, anxiety, and more.
But the British government said the measures follow positive feedback from a first-of-its-kind pilot program involving 309 young people aged 13 to 17 across the UK. In the month-long pilot program, the teenagers faced three interventions: an overnight curfew between 9 pm and 7 am, 15-minute-a-day restrictions on app use, and the complete removal of some apps from their phones.
The pilot program found that the curfew was generally easier to adopt than other measures, and the ability to switch it off meant that parents could make exceptions for travel, sleepovers, or other instances where urgent communication is needed. The families reported that overnight curfews “quickly became part of their routine and helped improve sleep and concentration,” the government said in a release. But even then, some teenagers with the curfew imposed on their phones were able to evade it simply by switching to their laptops. The curfew was also harder to impose on weekends and school holidays, when the students’ routine changed, and teens tended to stay up later.
The measures are part of the UK’s regulatory crackdown on the negative mental health impacts of addictive social media use in kids and teens. Last month, the UK government announced a social media ban for under-16 users, following in the footsteps of a landmark Australian social media ban for under-16s that went into effect in December and has since inspired scores of countries around the world. The UK’s new measures for 16- and 17-year-olds are meant to ease teens into social media use once the ban lifts rather than suddenly plunging them into unrestricted internet use. A similar phase-in plan is being discussed over in the European Union as well.
The UK’s initiative will be formally introduced to the British Parliament later this year. If passed, the bans and curfews take effect in Spring 2027.
The UK’s social media ban goes beyond just social media platforms to restrict certain activities for teens on online chatting and gaming platforms. The UK government said on Wednesday that it is planning on expanding its restrictions even further with an AI chatbot safety package, as well. The AI chatbot package would include requiring regular breaks for under-18 users and cracking down on chatbots that “provide dangerous, misleading or unverified mental health advice” by all means, including banning the ones it deems a “serious threat,” the government shared.
