UK moves to tackle addictive features

The UK Government has announced additional measures intended to protect teenagers online, following last month’s announcement that social media companies will be banned from offering services to children under the age of 16.

The UK Government has today announced additional measures intended to protect teenagers online, following last month’s announcement that social media companies will be banned from offering services to children under the age of 16.

The new measures for 16- and 17-year-olds include:

• Overnight social media curfews, with push notifications turned off between midnight and 6am, and restrictions on autoplay and algorithmic feeds, which will be switched off by default.
• The Government has also announced that AI chatbots will be required to introduce mandatory breaks for all children under 18, with an expert panel making recommendations on how frequent and how long those breaks should be.
• The Government will not ban or age-gate VPNs, but will expect companies to take greater action to prevent children from easily using them to circumvent safety measures.

5Rights Pathways research, now five years old, demonstrated how features and functionalities designed to capture and hold children’s attention were disrupting childhood and causing real harm. It showed how these design choices were driven by a business imperative to maximise engagement at the expense of children’s safety and wellbeing. While only for older teenagers, we are pleased to see these harmful design features finally being addressed.

However, the UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code established a clear expectation in 2021 that children’s best interests should be a primary consideration in the design of digital services. Yet five years later, the Government is still having to intervene on individual features and functionalities that put engagement ahead of children.

This demonstrates the importance of strong enforcement and proactive regulatory action. We cannot rely on Government intervening feature by feature, long after harms have been identified. Existing requirements for age-appropriate design must be robustly enforced, and regulators must be equipped and willing to act before harmful design practices become embedded in children’s digital lives.