UK social media restrictions to take effect March 2027 adopt age adaptive model

The UK’s new regulations for social media will come into force in March 2027, according to an announcement from Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.

The new legislation focuses on features rather than specific apps, introducing a tiered system in which content can be adapted based on a previous age verification converted into a credential or age signal. This can include the declared age range model in use by Apple and Google Play, which uses a declared age to slot users into an age bracket or band curated to be age appropriate.

Nandy is promising “proper, comprehensive legislation” that “incorporates the features that we believe are not safe.” That includes functions that aim to addict kids, such as endless scrolling and personalized algorithms.

The move reflects an ongoing shift in the age assurance sphere toward models that are designed to hold platforms accountable, rather than blocking users. In Australia, where the Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) rule catalyzed the global movement to regulate social platforms, the government is moving toward a digital duty of care, which says platforms cannot harm their users without consequence.

Civil rights groups, too, have called for a duty of care model, pointing out that the companies responsible for ongoing harm must be held to account if the problem is to be solved in the long term.

Curfews, blocked notifications ease kids into adult use

The UK’s model restricts users under 16 from social sites and puts limitations on functionality for users between 16 and 18. Per an online fact sheet, “16 and 17 year olds will still be able to access social media, but live streaming, and stranger communication including in gaming, will be switched off by default for these ages.” Autoplay for videos will be turned off by default, although users over 15 can change that setting. Curfews and notification blocks will be in place for 16- and 17-year-olds from midnight to 6am.

The logic is that kids shouldn’t turn 16 and immediately have to face “a cliff-edge of being exposed to the most addictive features online.”

The government is also careful to note that the law is not intended to impact educational sites. “The internet plays a huge role in children’s education, and we are clear that has to continue,” it says. “We’re not looking to bring dedicated educational platforms, which support schoolwork and learning, under these new rules.”

Coverage in the Mirror, a tabloid, adopts an interesting framing with the headline, “Tech firms could earn social media ban exemption if they make their platforms safe.” The piece quotes Nandy, who says “there will be a way for companies, if they want to innovate and they want to change, to be able to get themselves essentially off that list” of apps restricted to kids 16 and up.

“But that’s up to them. We believe that’s their choice. They can decide to innovate if they want to, and we believe they should because we think they have their social and moral obligations. But whether they do it or not, the government has an obligation here and we intend to act.”

To retain users under 16, platforms will be asked to perform a safety by design, feature-led assessment, the criteria for which are still being defined.

Privacy versus safety trade-off ‘no longer holds,’ says k-ID

Luc Delany, chief corporate affairs officer for compliance provider k-ID, sees the UK announcement as a step forward in addressing the privacy versus safety debate.

“A feature-led test means services will need to show which features are available to under-16s, and which defaults apply to 16 and 17-year-olds,” he says, in an email sent to Biometric Update.  “That is age adaptation rather than a ban, and it is already live in other jurisdictions. Discord last week began adapting features by age band, with k-ID supporting the age assurance step.”

Delany believes “the privacy versus safety trade-off that has framed this debate no longer holds. With AgeKeys” – the age assurance tech based on the passkey model – “a user who has completed an age check stores the result as a passkey on their own device. The site requiring the check never learns who the user is, and the user does not need to repeat the check for every service.”

Delany believes the UK is in a unique position that will allow it to move quickly on the file, since “the under-16 power already sits inside the Online Safety Act and Ofcom is in place.”

Lingering uncertainty over enforcement regime

Nandy is on board with fast changes. She doubles down on her promise that the government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham will come down hard when it comes to online safety, declaring the belief that “it is uniquely wrong that we have allowed the online spaces to be treated as private spheres, policed and regulated only by the private sector.”

“We believe there is a really strong role for the government here to step up and you can expect to see a much more interventionist government in this area.”

In order to make good on that promise, the government has some work to do in deciding on where enforcement power should sit. Currently, Ofcom is in charge, but there remain lingering questions about capacity to be forceful enough. One suggestion, from Maeve Walsh, director at the Online Safety Network, is to invest statutory powers in the Digital Regulations Cooperation Forum, which brings together existing regulators that cover online safety, including Ofcom, the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Competition and Markets Authority and the Office of Product Safety and Standards.

Platforms can choose to be safe for everyone: ‘up to them’

Among Nandy’s pronouncements, the key line is the one that says social media platforms “can decide to innovate if they want to,” and that the government believes they should “because we think they have their social and moral obligations.”

What, indeed, are social media’s social and moral obligations? Or, more to the point, do their leadership teams believe they actually have any?

Meta, it must be conceded, is an easy target for criticism. Courts and regulators have chastened it. It keeps releasing products that most people do not want. Yet it remains the main icon for the dominating power of Web 2.0, which turned the internet into a network of proprietary platforms that promised social connection, but have delivered exactly the opposite.

But the question of Meta’s values must factor into the discussion about a digital duty of care, or any mechanism for holding platforms accountable. While the company has publicly pledged to follow Australia’s SMMA law, in practice it has shown casual disdain for the idea that it should be required to check the age of its users. If, as Nandy says, it is social media giants’ choice to  operate according to accepted social and legal norms, it is important to ask how their operation has thus far worked to shift the goalposts on those norms.

A duty of care hinges on the final word: care. Do social platforms care what happens to their users? Do they feel any sense of responsibility to them whatsoever? If social platforms decide they do not like a rule, they will contest it in court indefinitely.

Social media: is it redeemable?

The point is that it may not be the platforms, but the social media business model itself, that needs interrogating. Cans used to be made out of lead, but the lead was the problem, not the cans. Is there a version of social media that is reimagined in similar fashion – built, so to speak, out of different material? Or are we reaching the point at which, asking of social media, “what does this do?”, we are forced to conclude that the answer is, “nothing good”? Tobacco and alcohol, two of the world’s most notorious regulated products, at least have millennia of history behind them; Meta’s brief legacy is mainly one of social discord.

One thing seems certain: large social media platforms and digital regulators globally are on a collision course. How forceful – and damaging – the impact will be to both parties remains an open question.

Article Topics

Declared Age Range  |  k-ID  |  legislation  |  regulation  |  social media  |  UK age verification