Most British teens to opt out of planned social media curfew: Poll

LONDON – Most teenagers would opt out of a British government plan to impose social media curfews on older teenagers, according to a poll published on Aug 7.

Plans to introduce an overnight social media curfew for children aged 16 and 17 were unveiled by the British government in mid-July under Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s predecessor, Keir Starmer.

The curfew would supplement a social media ban on under-16s announced by Starmer in June, covering sites including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

The time restriction would be enabled by default settings on social media accounts for children aged 16 and 17, preventing them from accessing social media sites between midnight and 6am.

But the feature could be turned off, and a survey by consultants Censuswide found 85 per cent of 16 to 18-year-olds said they would disable it.

Just under half of the teenagers polled said they would turn the feature off to allow them to speak to friends and family, while 37 per cent said they would opt out of the curfew to watch online content.

The research suggests a curfew is “unlikely to be enough on its own to prevent online harms”, said Leanne Proctor, regulatory lead at the Online Responsibility Network, the organisation for which the survey was conducted.

Just 2 per cent of the 1,000 teenagers polled said they did not currently scroll on social media or watch short-form videos on school nights.

Over 18 per cent of them said they consumed social media content until 1am or later.

Education Minister Bridget Phillipson told broadcasters after the plan was unveiled that the voluntary element of the curfews could be changed if it was found too many teenagers were switching off the default settings.

The British government has said its plan is inspired by Australia’s under-16 social media ban, which was introduced in December and does not include a curfew for 16- and 17-year-olds.

Australia was the first country to implement such a ban and has so far seen mixed results. AFP