MPs Debate a Petition Against the Under-16s Social Media Ban

MPs will spend part of Monday afternoon on a petition that says the government should not ban social media for under-16s. The e-petition, number 757233, has passed 217,000 signatures. It argues that for many young people social media is how they talk to friends, and that some treat it as a lifeline, a community and a support network. The debate is in Westminster Hall from 4.30pm. Tony Vaughan, a Labour member of the Petitions Committee, will open it. Ian Murray, minister for creative industries, media and online safety, is expected to reply.

A petitions debate is a general debate. It does not end in a vote on the request. MPs can press the minister. They cannot, this afternoon, repeal a policy the government has already announced. The main chamber is on the Budget from 2.30pm, after housing questions. The petition was given the side room, not the floor.

What the government has already decided

On 4 March, answering the petition, the government said it recognised the benefits of digital technologies, including social media, for children, and that it was consulting on how to give them an enriching experience online. The consultation, Growing Up in the Online World, ran from 2 March to 26 May and drew 116,211 responses.

On 15 June the government then announced a ban on social media use by children under 16, aimed at spring 2027. It said it would follow the Australian model and go further, by also blocking functions such as livestreaming and contact with strangers for under-16s. Ministers have said they want the regulations before Parliament before the end of this year. On 15 July they added a default overnight curfew, from midnight to 6am, for 16 and 17 year olds, with features that prolong scrolling switched off by default, so that a 16th birthday is not a cliff edge.

The legal hook is already on the statute book. Section 70 of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 inserts a new section 214A into the Online Safety Act 2023. It requires the government to bring forward regulations that impose some form of age or functionality restriction when children use social media. That duty was the concession after a run of defeats in the House of Lords. Monday's petitioners are arguing with a decision that Parliament has already required ministers to make in some form, even if the precise ban was a later political choice.

How this sits with Friday's court judgment

The ban is not the same fight as the one Meta, WhatsApp, X and TikTok lost on Friday. The High Court upheld Ofcom's power to demand safety data under section 100 of the Online Safety Act. Lord Justice Singh and Mrs Justice Collins Rice said the transparency regime and the information notices do different jobs, and that the platforms had not shown how much of the cost was truly new. Those notices, first sent in February, ask for user volumes by age, moderation, exposure to harm, appeals and reports, including children's exposure, back to January 2024.

Monday's debate is about whether under-16s should be on the services at all. Friday's judgment is about whether the regulator can see what those services do while the political argument continues. A platform that loses in Westminster Hall this afternoon loses an afternoon. A platform that loses in the Administrative Court, as these three did, keeps a legal duty to hand over the data. The judges granted permission on proportionality and then dismissed that ground on the merits. There was no finding of unfairness on the material before the court.

What parents and platforms should watch for

The useful product of a petitions debate is the minister's language, not a new statute. Listen for whether Murray treats spring 2027 as fixed, whether the curfew for 16 and 17 year olds is still the companion policy, and whether the government will distinguish private messaging from public feeds when it writes the regulations. The petition's core claim is social, not technical: that a ban removes a place where some teenagers find friends. The government's core claim since June is the opposite risk, that the same place is where harm scales.

Neither claim is settled by 217,000 signatures, and neither needs to be. The signatures were enough to put a minister on the record while the Finance Bill's paving motions wait until Tuesday night in the chamber next door. For families planning around a spring change, and for companies building age checks, the date that matters is still the laying of the regulations, which ministers have said they want before the year ends. Today's transcript will show how much room they think they still have.