UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced Monday that Britain will introduce a social media ban for children aged 16 and under, prohibiting kids from using platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, according to ABC News.

Messaging apps such as Signal and WhatsApp are not expected to be affected.

"We're going further than any country in the world by banning social media for under-16s and putting wider protections in place to give kids their childhood back," Starmer said at a press conference, adding: "This is a line in the sand. Tech giants had their chance and failed."

According to ABC News, the government will also block harmful functions such as livestreaming and stranger communication with children for under-16s.

Britain is following Australia's playbook but going further: ABC News reports that Australia's under-16 ban took effect in December 2025, and the UK plans to add stricter security measures on top of a blanket ban.

Starmer said he hopes parliament will debate the legislation before Christmas, with implementation planned for early 2027.

The move puts Britain ahead of other countries that have proposed similar restrictions, including Canada, Brazil and Indonesia, while France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are developing strategies of their own, ABC News reports.

Australia's world-first ban offers a sobering preview of the enforcement challenge.

Medical Daily reports that in the law's first three months, the share of 10- to 15-year-olds holding an account on a restricted platform fell from 52.4% to 42.1% — yet 81.5% still used at least one restricted platform in the previous four weeks.

Platforms reportedly revoked about 4.7 million accounts, and the government roughly doubled the maximum penalty for systemic failures to about A$99 million (about US$69 million) in September 2026. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told 60 Minutes: "We haven't seen the kind of compliance I would have hoped for from the social media platforms."

The industry is pushing back on both fronts.

ABC News reports that YouTube argued blanket bans "push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less safe services," while Meta said bans "risk isolating teens" and called for device-level age verification, and Snap warned a ban "doesn't make them safer — it may simply push them to less safe platforms."

TikTok said it would examine the details and collaborate constructively.

Meanwhile, Medical Daily notes that Reddit and a digital rights group are challenging Australia's law in the High Court, with hearings expected before the end of the year, and that eSafety is investigating Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for possible noncompliance.

Crucially, no data yet shows whether the bans improve children's mental health, since Australia's two-year regulator study is still underway. Starmer's legislation now heads to Westminster for debate before Christmas.