Britain will ban under-16s from social media apps, including TikTok and YouTube

Britain will ban children under 16 from using a range of social media apps including Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube to protect young people from harmful content and excessive screen time, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday,

Starmer told a news conference that he will fight back if technology companies resist the move, and acknowledged some teens would try to find their way around a ban. But he said he is "not prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children."

"Every parent can see it with their own eyes. Social media is making children unhappy," said Starmer, who has two teenage children. "I've heard first hand from families crying out for change and we will do right by them."

The move, expected to take effect early next year, makes the U.K. part of a growing global movement to tighten online safety for children. Australia, Canada, Brazil and Indonesia have introduced legislation or announced age-based restrictions or requirements for children's access to social media. France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are among others studying or developing similar approaches.

The U.K. plans to follow the same model for a social media ban as Australia, which last year became the first country to bar under-16s from holding social media accounts. Platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to exclude children younger than 16 could be punished with multimillion-dollar fines.

The U.K. said its ban will apply to platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, but not YouTube Kids or messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal. Starmer stressed that enforcement action will target tech companies, not children.

He said the government will act to prevent strangers from contacting children on gaming and livestreaming platforms. Authorities are also considering additional measures including overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for those under 18. More details are expected next month.

The decision follows a public comment period in which the government got 116,000 responses from parents, the tech industry and children. The number of responses was second only to one seeking input about same-sex marriage in 2012.

The vast majority of respondents — more than 90% — wanted an under-16 ban, the government said.

Esther Ghey, whose 16-year-old daughter Brianna was killed in 2023 by two teenagers who had accessed harmful content online, said the ban would "potentially save so many children's lives," but had to be accompanied by other measures.

NSPCC, a leading children's charity, praised the government's ambition but urged authorities to ensure platforms roll out "robust age checks" and effectively enforce the policy.

Critics including the Open Rights Group have expressed concerns about age verification companies and how users' private data is protected.

Reacting on Monday, a spokesperson for YouTube warned that a blanket social media restriction could "push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less-safe services."

Starmer acknowledged the challenges, but said success for the ban would mean "a massive drop off of children on social media" and "a cultural change, a sense that actually you can grow up differently."

Starmer, elected just under two years ago, is under pressure to step down from members of his own party over what they see as poor leadership and could face a leadership challenge in the coming days or weeks. He is seeking to bring in consequential measures that can serve as a legacy.

The ban could further inflame tensions with the U.S., which has warned that regulations should be narrow and not violate free speech protections, according to a statement from the U.S. Embassy in London. It said it was also concerned that regulations would place greater burdens on American technology companies.

Starmer said he expected to discuss the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders at a Group of Seven summit in France that starts Monday.

"I honestly think that across world leaders, there has always been a recognition that leaders have to take steps to protect children," he said. "I don't think that's controversial. There will always be arguments as to exactly what the limits of that are and what rules should be in place, but I don't see that as a problem."

Jon Crowcroft, a communications systems professor at the University of Cambridge, said people supporting social bans are well-meaning but probably misguided, and changes could prevent children from accessing sites they need.

"There is a real risk this will drive some users to worse sites and policing devices is close to impossible technically," Crowcroft said. "Policing platforms is far easier, if only regulators would bother."

U.K Media Discover British Version of DOJ-CRS called “Research, Information and Communications Unit” (RICU)

June 15, 2026 | Sundance

Media in the U.K have discovered their domestic equivalent of the American Community Relations Service (CRS). In Britain the public manipulation operation is run out of an intelligence sub-silo known as the Research, Information and Communications Unit, or RICU.

Both the American government’s CRS, run out of the Dept of Justice, and the British government’s RICU do exactly the same thing. They manufacture narratives, promote domestic propaganda and support leftist ideology within news cycles. If there is an event that represents something culturally awkward, like a minority specifically targeting a white person, both the CRS and the RICU quickly go into action to control public information.

Both government organizations can reach into the systems of law and order, police and courts, and instruct the participants about what types of information can be released to the public. The CRS or RICU then control all information to ensure it is in alignment with the ideological message of the government.

WATCH:

‘Attack on your consciousness’ | Secret gov unit ACCUSED of using propaganda to CONTROL the public

Readers here will likely remember our frequent discussions of the secretive Community Relations Service, within the DOJ. President Trump initially took apart the CRS, but in the legislative branch congress fully restored the CRS in the continuing resolution funding bill.

DAILY MAIL – […] The 22-strong unit was established in 2007 by the late Charles Farr, a former MI6 officer, as part of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy.
Modelled on the Information Research Department (IRD), a propaganda unit established by the Attlee government in 1948 to blacken the names of communists and other political opponents, RICU operates out of the Home Office’s Westminster headquarters.
While its original purpose was to monitor and challenge the spread of Al Qaeda propaganda and to vet the language used by public officials when describing terrorism, its tentacles now stretch far across Whitehall – to the extent that critics say it risks strangling free speech.
When the mobs took to the streets of Northern Ireland last week following the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie, allegedly by Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese asylum-seeker, RICU swung into action to advise the police in the province on how to ‘control the narrative’. (read more)

The CRS operation in the United States was fully discovered during the era of Black Lives Matter, when it was discovered how they influenced the judicial system surrounding the trial of George Zimmerman. Since then, we discovered the CRS involvement in almost all highly controversial events in the United States.

We have tracked the CRS activity for years {Example Go Deep}. The core ideology of the CRS is virtually unknown to the public. The activists who apply for employment positions inside the CRS have one ideological outlook in support of radical elements like NAACP, Black Lives Matter, ANTIFA, and other social justice causes. There is no other ideology in the agency of the CRS. Advancement of radical race-based agenda is their mission within the DOJ. That reality is well beyond dispute.

As a consequence, anyone applying for a job with CRS would have a very specific purpose. The motive for CRS leadership, to give a CRS applicant access to the Main Justice database potentially exploiting the entire federal Department of Justice, can only be looked upon as purposeful. Think of this “misconduct” like giving BLM, Antifa, ShareBlue, NAACP or the radical elements of the DNC access to the Dept of Justice files: [September 8, 2021]

The DOJ-CRS is the least known quasi-legislatively approved agency within the justice department. The CRS is the Community Relations Service, and is a very secret division within the DOJ civil rights unit. The activity of the CRS is rarely discussed, but essentially the agency is authorized to reach into any national event, investigation, court proceeding, local, state or federal, and modify/guide the proceedings under the auspices of maintaining national racial harmony.

“The Community Relations Service (CRS), a component of the Department of Justice (DOJ), serves as “America’s Peacemaker” for communities in conflict by mediating disputes and enhancing community capacity to independently prevent and resolve future conflicts.” (read more)

We followed the CRS in the Trayvon Martin case and watched them in real time organize the NAACP, New Black Panthers, Dream Defenders and AME church network.

We watched in real time as the Eric Holder led Federal Department of Justice, dispatched a team of federal agents, led by Thomas Battles, to block the Sanford Police Department and demand the resignation of Sanford Police Chief, Bill Lee.

Federal agents were doing this. The CRS feds organized the marches, coordinated the marches, facilitated the marches and yes, paid for the marches,…. to deliver what exactly?

Yet, almost the entire country has no idea what the DOJ-CRS activity consists of.

We originally began highlighting the work of the DOJ Community Relations Service (DOJ-CRS) over a decade ago as a result of several racial issues which surfaced after Barack Obama was elected.

The 2021 Christmas parade attack in Wisconsin was a worst-case scenario for the federal officials who shape American racial views for political control. That is why we saw such extraordinary efforts to tamp down the story, and that’s exactly the reason why local authorities said they would not provide any further press conferences after the one organized by the CRS at 1pm on the day after the attack.

If the races were reversed, there would be press conferences every six hours three times a day with updates. There would be dozens of subsidiary human-interest stories on national television sharing, highlighting and emphasizing every granular aspect of the horrific attack by Darrell Brooks. There would be satellite trucks outside the hospitals and officials giving updates every few hours.

If the races were reversed, the white man who drove into a crowd of black parade goers in retaliation for a jury decision would be front and center of every news story, broadcast and panel discussion for weeks. However, when any attack falls into the elements of control by the CRS, the story disappears quickly. This is all coordinated by the DOJ-CRS, and yet few people know about them.

Race is used as a political tool by those who control the levers of power in the U.S. government. Victims and perpetrators are defined according to how the dividing narrative fits their effort for political value. The progressive group deep inside the CRS are also called “the federal peacekeepers“, because they organize the nuances within the division to protect the system from outcomes they essentially create.

The CRS watches, and in many ways facilitates, politicians and federal officials stirring up racial strife. The CRS supports cultural Marxism. However, when the inevitable violence surfaces, the CRS must control the backlash.

[NOTE: The CRS only activates when the minority supported group attack the majority non-supported group.]

The DC system operators have used racial division for their own benefit for decades; however, the federal ‘peacekeeper’ deployment has been refined, updated and refreshed with the advent of technology and social media.

The CRS primarily focuses on clouding, obfuscating and hiding motives from violent race-based attacks. They will take a small innocuous possibility and expand it into the larger talking points if that helps to deflect attention away from the real racial motive of a violent attack by a black suspect. The CRS primarily activates when the protected minority group attacks the majority group; their mission is to provide cover.

The CRS stands aside when national media and politicians push a false narrative that benefits their objectives. When a NASCAR garage pull down rope is falsely promoted as a noose, the CRS just watch and do not refute the claim. When Kyle Rittenhouse is wrongfully accused of being a white supremacist, the CRS do not get involved, they just watch and do not refute the claim. These examples advance the objectives of the cultural Marxists and are therefore not impeded.

However, when a protected and supported racial minority group attack the majority group with a motive based on race, the CRS quickly jump into action. That is the specificity of what they do, and the CRS have broad power and authority to carry out their operations because they are aligned with one side of the political continuum.

The CRS use allied media to shape their control over their defensive justifications and narratives. The CRS also have a massive network within the faith-based community that act as partners for their mission.

The African Methodist Episcopal church (AME) is a major partner for the CRS in their objectives. Their relationship goes back to the civil rights era, before the CRS was corrupted for unilateral political benefit. There is also a large network of nationwide community activist groups who are part of the CRS rolodex. The federal peacekeeper reach is massive and, because of the cultural sensitivity they use as a weapon, it is virtually unchallenged.

You can read about some specifics of how the CRS operates in the example of the Sanford, Florida protests {go Deep}.

The DOJ-CRS giving applicants access to the DOJ database is the same type of “mistake” as the FBI contractors unlawfully using the NSA database to assist in opposition research against the campaign and presidency of Donald Trump; which is to say, it wasn’t a mistake.

pdf Link Here

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.