The British government has set out a new plan to rein in how much time older teenagers spend on social media, this time targeting 16 and 17-year-olds. The proposals form the latest step in a wider push to make the online world safer for young people, and they focus on limiting the features that keep teenagers glued to their screens late into the night and for hours at a time.
At the centre of the plan is an overnight curfew. Under the measures, 16 and 17-year-olds would be automatically logged out of social media between midnight and 6am, a window designed to stop young people scrolling through the night. The aim is to break the habit of late-night use that keeps teenagers awake and cuts into the sleep they need for school the next day.
The plan also takes aim at one of the features that keeps users hooked. According to the proposals, infinite scrolling, the endless stream of content that an app feeds to a user without any natural stopping point, would be automatically turned off for these teenagers. Removing that constant flow is meant to give young people a moment to step away rather than being pulled from one post to the next.
Beyond social media, the measures extend to the growing use of artificial intelligence tools. The proposals include a requirement for under-18s to take regular breaks when using chatbots, reflecting concern about how much time young people are spending in conversation with these systems and the effect that near-constant use could have on them.
There is, however, a significant caveat that has drawn criticism. The restrictions are not mandatory or permanent, which means the affected teenagers would be able to turn off these default settings if they choose to. That loophole is at the heart of the concerns raised, with critics questioning how much difference the measures will make if young people can simply switch them off.
The government has defended the approach as a deliberate one. The Minister for AI and online safety, Kanishka Narayan, said he believed the measures would be welcomed by teenagers, arguing that young people and families had told the government they did not want a cliff edge at 16, but a smoother slope. He framed the defaults as a way to empower 16 and 17-year-olds rather than simply banning them from the platforms.
The minister also pushed back on the idea that teenagers would immediately disable the settings. He pointed to evidence that when some platforms introduced defaults of this sort, they had an effect, and he said it would do a disservice to teenagers to assume they would all switch the protections off, insisting that the motivation and the evidence base behind the measures were clear.
The plan builds on steps the government has already taken to protect younger children online. It follows the decision to ban social media for under-16s, and officials say the new measures for older teenagers are meant to help them get more sleep, focus better at school and spend more time with family and friends, extending the same logic to the 16 and 17 age group in a less absolute way.