The United Kingdom concluded a three-month national consultation titled Growing Up in the Online World in May 2026, receiving over 116,000 responses. Among the 54,000 parents of 10-15 year-olds who participated, 90 percent supported restricting social media access for children under 16, though only 19 percent of the 14,000 responding children favored such restrictions. Following the consultation, the Starmer Labour Government announced it will introduce an Australia-plus social media ban for users under 16.
A blanket under-16 ban forces compliant families offline while driving determined young users and their would-be abusers into unmonitored encrypted channels where no oversight exists. Real-time detection of grooming and sextortion patterns in direct messages—the capability Guardii delivers as a Meta Business Partner across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox—would have addressed the documented harms driving parental concern without severing an entire generation's access to legitimate communication, educational resources and peer support networks that the same consultation data shows children value.
