The UK government has announced they're going ahead with a social media ban for 16 year old and under.
In our household we've already had this restriction in place (at a network/DNS level) so it doesn't impact our kids experiences at all, but I do know from talking to the kids that the do wish their friends had it too. I would add that I'm in no doubt that kids will find work arounds, but the larger effect of this, I think, is important.
A few quotes that interest me from the GOV.UK news post:
The ban will therefore include platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. We do not intend for messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal to be included in the social media ban
I'm assuming that "like" refers to the user-to-user definition, and I'd expect or hope to see pretty clear definitions (though the government doesn't particularly have a track record on clear definitions).
The government will also be looking in more detail at overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for under-18-year-olds and will set out more detail in July.
In particular the breaks in infinite scrolling - though I've been personally arguing that it could be banned altogether - the only function it serves from a UX perspective is "stickiness" aka - addition.
I'm sceptical about the implementation rules and I'm particularly worried about how the government goes about setting the definitions of what products will need to do.
Source: www.gov.uk