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Tue, 24 Mar 2026

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 Social media bans and digital curfews to be trialled on UK teenagers

The government will interview the young people and their parents before and after they try the limits to assess their impact.

* A UK government-led trial will involve 300 teenagers having their social media apps either disabled entirely, blocked overnight, or capped at one hour's use.
* The pilot scheme will run alongside a consultation on whether to make it illegal for under-16s to access many social media sites, following Australia's lead.
* Participants in the trial will be split into four groups: three with different types of interventions and one acting as a control group.
* Children and parents involved in the trial will be interviewed before and after the pilot scheme to assess its impact.
* The government says it has received nearly 30,000 responses so far to its consultation on banning social media for children.
* A separate study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, will begin later this year and recruit 4,000 students aged 12-15 from Bradford secondary schools to assess the impact of reducing social media use among adolescents.
* The study will aim to address the current lack of quality data on both what impact social media currently has on children and what difference restricting it might make.