After Australia, Britain has now shut under-16s out of the major platforms. From one continent to the next, some twenty countries are legislating to keep teenagers off social media — an unprecedented wave whose real-world effectiveness, however, is far from proven.
The signal came from London. On Monday, June 15, Keir Starmer announced that the United Kingdom would bar under-16s from Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, to shield them from harmful content and excessive screen time. “Social media is making our children unhappy and unsafe, and as a parent as much as a Prime Minister, I just can’t let that go on anymore,” the Labour leader said. The measure, which spares messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal, rests on a national consultation: of 116,000 responses, more than 90% backed a ban below the age of 16. The government is aiming for the rules to take effect in early 2027.
London is following in Canberra’s footsteps. Australia became the first country in the world to take the plunge, on December 10, 2025: neither young people nor their parents face penalties, but platforms risk fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars if they let minors’ accounts stay open.
The first results, however, pour cold water on hopes of a silver bullet. While 4.7 million accounts belonging to under-16s were removed by mid-December, the compliance report published in March by Australia’s online safety regulator told another story: 70% of children still held an active account. The workarounds, entirely predictable, multiplied — VPNs, masks held up to age-verification cameras, an older sibling or a parent sitting in front of the lens, and a shift to lesser-known apps. All of which feeds the central criticism leveled at such laws: they push back the age of access rather than cleaning up the platforms themselves.
That hasn’t slowed the momentum. Beyond Australia, restrictions are already in force in Brazil, China, Indonesia and Malaysia, while Turkey is preparing to lock out under-15s. On the announcement side, Canada tabled a bill on June 10 also setting the threshold at 16, and Europe is stirring: Greece, Austria, Norway, Slovenia, Germany, Sweden and Denmark are all working on texts mostly targeting under-14s or under-15s.
France, for its part, is moving in fits and starts. The National Assembly adopted a bill on first reading, overnight on January 26–27, 2026, banning social media before the age of 15, sponsored by MP Laure Miller. The issue was reignited by Emmanuel Macron after a 14-year-old student murdered a school supervisor in Nogent-sur-Seine, the president threatening a national ban if Europe fails to act. The government hopes to apply it from the September school term. One major hurdle remains: the text’s compatibility with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), with Brussels currently favoring age verification over a harmonized “digital age of majority.”
Portugal, Spain, Italy and India round out the picture of a global battle still very much under construction. Everywhere the same question lingers, one the Australian example poses starkly: is an age barrier enough where teenagers already know how to vault over it?
