1. Require everyone to present ID to social media to make it easier to arrest them if they say something offensive. Remember that the UK already arrests ~1k per month for stuff they say on social media.

2. Them to crack down on VPNs and other methods that will inevitably be used to fight this incredible overreach.

IOW, this is the start of the great firewall of the UK.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5874495&forum_id=2/#49940760)

By forcing Apple and Google to verify age at the device level during phone setup…

Keir Starmer’s government isn’t protecting kids — it’s building a surveillance infrastructure.

The OS itself will restrict platforms like TikTok, Instagram and X, making VPNs largely useless because the block happens before any traffic leaves your phone.

🚨Once every device carries a verified age profile, authorities gain an easy route to identify users through legal requests to tech firms.

This is digital ID by the back door, sold as child safety.

Classic Labour: expand state control first, ask questions later.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

https://x.com/WasAcop/status/2066627627750727767?s=20

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5874495&forum_id=2/#49941675)

Apple and Google to be forced to check ID over social media ban

Tech giants will be compelled to carry out age verification confirming users are over 16 when the government’s social media ban is implemented early next year

Max Kendix, Political Correspondent, and Mark Sellman, Technology Correspondent

Monday June 15 2026, 8.55pm BST, The Times

Apple and Google will be forced to carry out age checks on children using their phones under plans being drawn up by ministers after Sir Keir Starmer announced a ban on social media for under-16s.

The prime minister said the ban, which will be implemented early next year, would make children “happier and safer”.

Children will be blocked from accessing the largest social media platforms, including Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok, although those deemed less “risky” such as WhatsApp and Pinterest would still be allowed.

Politics newsletter Get our daily insider’s guide to Westminster, plus a rundown of PMQs every Wednesday. Sign up with one click

Children will also be barred from communicating with adults online and livestreaming themselves. Those under 18 will be banned from using artificial intelligence chatbots with romantic or sexual features. For 16 and 17-year-olds, the government is considering a ban on infinite scrolling and a curfew on night-time use.

Ministers insisted that enforcement would be tougher in Britain than in Australia, where a majority of children are still accessing apps by getting around age verification despite a similar ban coming into force in December.

Age-verification systems used by platforms offering adult content in the UK usually work by either using AI to estimate a user’s age from a selfie of their face, or using their bank details or their physical ID.

Starmer announced the ban, which is overwhelmingly popular with voters, ahead of the Makerfield by-election on Thursday in which Andy Burnham hopes to return to parliament and launch a leadership challenge.

Burnham backed calls for a full social media ban for children from Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, in January. Soon after Starmer launched a consultation on the topic, in which nine in ten parents who responded backed a minimum age of 16. Some 83 per cent said they believed the risks presented by social media outweighed the benefits.

Starmer insisted that the ban was “bigger than the usual to and fro of politics” and was a “huge issue for the country” rather than “about any one individual”.

The move sets up a fight over who is responsible for age verification checks between Apple and Google, who between them run the vast majority of phone operating systems, and social media platforms.

Ministers are understood to have ruled out age verification being carried out by device manufacturers over concerns of the impact on global supply chains.

They are thought to prefer the operating system route as it reduces the need to repeat checks and means that sensitive data is stored in one place.

These checks would happen at the point that a user sets up their new phone rather than when they create an account with a social media company.

“We definitely see a world in which that makes it easier and simpler for users to age assure,” a senior government official said. “It probably won’t always be the only method, but it certainly offers opportunities that we’re really interested in.”

The approach is opposed by Apple and Google, who are worried about holding legal responsibility for age checks and do not want to collect and distribute the ages of its users at scale because of the privacy risks.

The government recently gave the two companies a three-month ultimatum to come up with a plan to stop children seeing nude imagery on their devices, which would also require age checks.

Average Briton will spend 5 years doomscrolling

Apple has started to age check users in the UK who have downloaded the latest version of its operating system, and Google checks the ages of users if it detects their behaviour is not aligned with the age they have declared on their Android profile.

A tech industry source predicted that there was “still going to be a bit of a tussle” between Google and Apple on one side against Meta, which has been pushing for age checks to be done at the operating system level. The source said that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, should not be “absolved of responsibility” and warned ministers that “device level age checks are not the panacea you think they are”.

After Starmer announced the ban on Monday, social media companies were quick to criticise it. YouTube, which is owned by Google, said: “Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less-safe services.”

Meta said the ban risked “isolating teens from online communities and information, and driving them to unregulated alternatives that lack built-in protections and parental controls”.

Doomscrolling 708 videos a day: how TikTok turned our teens into addicts

Snapchat said the ban “may simply push [teenagers] to less safe platforms”.

Some campaigners also opposed the move. Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, who committed suicide aged 14 after being exposed to toxic content online, said the announcement was a “rush job” and an “ineffective” solution which “won’t take long to start unravelling”.

Starmer had previously told colleagues he was opposed to a blanket approach, but said on Monday that he had entered the consultation with “an open mind” and was persuaded by the evidence.

“This is not something I do lightly,” Starmer said. “I will not present it as cost-free as if social media has brought no benefits to young people, because clearly that is wrong. But government is always about choices and it’s clear to me that a full ban is the right choice.”

He added: “It will make a huge difference, it will make our children safer, it will make our children happier. It will give them more time, more security, more freedom to grow up, more opportunity.”

A close-up illustration of a 14-year-old boy looking at an iPhone displaying social media and messaging apps.

France, Norway and Spain have also announced similar social media bans for children

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex welcomed the ban, but warned “while measures such as these help reduce harm, they do not fix the problem at its source”.

Starmer said he acknowledged that a ban would not mean that no child ever logged on to social media again, comparing it to the ban on selling alcohol to under-18s.

He added: “It won’t be easy. Some technology companies want us to think that social media is unchangeable, part of an almost natural order. But we have to resist that kind of learnt helplessness. We have agency, we can change it and we will. Yes, it’s hard, hard to legislate for, hard to regulate, hard to enforce. That’s why we sought a wide range of views on this.”

Social media such as YouTube Kids, Lego Play and Google Classrooms will be outside the scope of the ban. Starmer said those examples were “obviously the other side of the line, they don’t have the features that are concerned here”. Messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal will also be exempt, as will educational services, e-commerce platforms and music streaming.

The list of platforms covered by the ban has yet to be fully detailed, but those that enable online interaction between users, allow users to post material and links to other websites and use algorithms or “persuasive design” are expected to be caught.

The move could spur a slew of legal challenges from platforms that believe they should not be included.

As part of the changes announced by Starmer, every pupil will learn about social media in the classroom from September, including information about artificial intelligence and how to spot deepfake images.

On Monday St Edward’s School in north Oxford said that it would extend its mobile phone ban after a pupil survey in which 80 per cent of pupils said that they now feel happy “all or most of the time”, compared with 63 per cent previously

Year 11 students at the boarding school will no longer be allowed their phones for two hours on two afternoons a week, after the survey found that 45 per cent were spending more time talking to their friends, and a third were spending longer on their school work.

The school made headlines last year when it introduced landlines into every boarding house so students can still call home after teachers introduced the ban, which they say has lifted participation in sports and increased loans from the library.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5874495&forum_id=2/#49941676)