Need-to-know July developments: Children’s online safety, social media bans and age assurance

This morning we hosted an Online Safety Lawyers’ Network event in our London office, focused on the wave of social media bans and what this means for the development of online safety regulation and for age assurance.

Despite being long-planned, the event followed a whirlwind fortnight or so of announcements in this space and we were delighted to be able to reflect and discuss some of the developments with Andy Lulham, from leading age assurance provider VerifyMy, and Catherine O’Callaghan from our Digital Regulation practice. 

Key developments in the children’s online safety space this month have included: 

New social media restrictions

• New ‘on ramp’ restrictions announced for under 18s’ use of social media in the UK. As part of its long awaited “Growing up in an online world” consultation response, the Government has confirmed that the UK’s incoming social media ban for under 16s (discussed here) will be accompanied by on-by-default functionality restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds. These will include overnight curfew and push notification restrictions, restrictions on autoplay and on personalised feeds. New restrictions on under 18s’ use of AI chatbots will also be introduced but no ban or age-gate on VPNs is being put forward at this stage.
• European Commission’s announcement of a “social media start date” for children. Reflecting on the publication of a report by a specially commissioned expert child safety panel, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has announced that the EU will adopt a “start date” for children’s use of social media as part of a new graduated approach to social media restriction, with parental oversight remaining central. Children are set to be allowed access to “safe as default” social media sites from 13, with older teenagers granted greater freedoms. Details of the proposals are to follow, after the summer.
• France bans social media for under-15s. Yesterday, the French Parliament approved the ban, to apply from 1 September 2026 for new users and in January 2027 for existing ones. Questions remain about how the French rules will dovetail with EU-level action, although the Commission’s expert panel report (mentioned above) recommends that an EU-wide age-13 limit could be supplemented by higher national age thresholds.

Age assurance updates 

• Ofcom’s publication of its statutory age assurance report. With effective age assurance measures widely seen as a linchpin for incoming social media bans in the UK (and EU), Ofcom’s examination of approaches that are working (and that aren’t) under the current Online Safety Act (OSA) regime provides important reading. In particular, Ofcom highlights that its current evidence suggests that age inference methods cannot be used to effectively enforce existing age gates (or the incoming social media ban). Ofcom also points to the need for cross-system “layers of protection”, with the regulator calling for further innovation around age assurance from “app stores, operating systems and at device level.”

Enforcement of children’s online safety 

• Increasing regulatory scrutiny on platforms’ approaches to children’s online safety. The European Commission has issued preliminary findings under the DSA relating to the “addictive design” of Meta’s Facebook and Instagram services (discussed in this blog) and, on 16 July, Ofcom launched an investigation into whether TikTok is complying with its duties under the OSA to protect children from encountering harmful content on its service, with focus falling on its current “inference” approach to age assurance (in line with findings in Ofcom’s statutory report, discussed above).
• This week, in the context of its enforcement against an online suicide forum, Ofcom has recognised the limits of its current ‘business disruption powers’ (discussed here) against services that implement geoblocking of UK users. It is engaging with Government to determine whether these powers can be strengthened. 

Our views 

These developments are representative of the complex and fast-moving picture for organisations in scope of the online safety rules and the lawyers advising them. Yet, more is to come. Key questions on the emerging social media bans are still outstanding, including which services will be within scope of the UK’s ban and restrictions, how the EU’s graduated approach will work in practice and how it will work alongside individual states’ own ban plans. Urgent questions also remain about how age assurance rules and expectations need to evolve to support the new bans. The publication of Ofcom’s rapid assessment of how highly effective age checks could work at age 16, expected in October, will be an important milestone. 

As our discussions this morning highlighted, there are trade-offs inherent in any age assurance deployment, involving the balancing of child protection, privacy, accuracy at boundary ages, circumvention and commercial risks. The resulting questions and tensions will likely only sharpen as the Government targets a spring 2027 implementation for the UK ban. We will continue to monitor and advise on these developments through the Online Safety Lawyers' Network and our wider practice, and we look forward to engaging with colleagues across the sector as the regulatory landscape continues to take shape.