UK: Social media ban for under 16s 'right diagnosis, wrong prescription'

Amnesty International has criticised the UK government’s decision to ban or restrict children and young people under 16 from accessing social media, warning that it risks treating children as the problem rather than addressing the platforms and business models that create online harms.

While acknowledging the urgent need to improve child safety online, Amnesty said blanket social media bans are a blunt tool that will not adequately address the complex harms facing young people and risk undermining their rights to information, expression and participation.

Kerry Moscogiuri, Chief Executive of Amnesty International UK, said:

“This is a case of the right diagnosis but the wrong prescription.

“The Government is right to recognise that many children face serious harms online. Too many social media companies have built products and business models that prioritise keeping children engaged for longer, often at the expense of their wellbeing, privacy and rights.

“But the problem is not that children exist on social media; it’s that social media companies have built platforms that are unsafe by design. Banning under-16s risks treating children as the problem rather than addressing the companies and systems that create the risks in the first place.

“Young people deserve to be safe online, but they also have rights. Social media can expose children to harm, but it is also where many young people learn, connect with friends, find support, organise around issues they care about and make their voices heard.

“You cannot solve a design problem with an access ban. If the diagnosis is that social media platforms are harming children, the remedy should be to regulate the platforms, not exclude children.

“The responsibility for children’s safety should rest first and foremost with the companies that build and profit from these platforms. Government action should focus on ending invasive profiling of children, tackling addictive and manipulative design features.

“Children should not have to surrender their privacy in order to participate in modern digital life. We need strong regulation that tackles surveillance-based business models, protects children’s data and puts safety ahead of profit.”

Amnesty International is calling for strong and enforceable platform regulation, including restrictions on profiling-by-default, hyper-personalised recommendation systems, autoplay, infinite scroll and other manipulative design features, alongside stronger protections for children’s privacy and safety online.

Amnesty International’s research has documented how platform design can push children into harm’s way. Its 2023 report, Driven into Darkness, found that TikTok’s hyper-personalised 'For You' feed could rapidly draw young users showing even limited interest in mental health topics into 'rabbit holes' of harmful content, including material that romanticises or encourages depressive thinking, self-harm and suicide.

Amnesty’s 2025 report, Dragged into the Rabbit Hole, highlighted TikTok’s ongoing failure to address its systemic design risks affecting children and young people. It found that two years after Amnesty’s previous report, TikTok was still steering vulnerable children and young people towards depressive and suicidal content.