Conservatives pledge to ban social media for under-16s

The Conservatives person said they would prohibition societal media for children nether the property of 16.

Tory person Kemi Badenoch said her enactment would rise the "age of consent" to "protect children" from harmful contented specified arsenic utmost pornography.

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The argumentation goes a measurement further than the Tories' erstwhile calls for smartphones to beryllium banned successful schools - a presumption the authorities has rejected connected the grounds that it believes it is for idiosyncratic schools to halt them being utilized successful classrooms and that astir bash this anyway.

The Conservatives person said the prohibition is indispensable successful airy of grounds showing that children are present spending grounds amounts of clip online and are often being exposed to convulsive content, pornography and different utmost material, arsenic good arsenic perchance coming into interaction with predatory oregon exploitative adults.

Ms Badenoch said: "As a mum, I cognize parents are nether existent unit online.

"Our argumentation is simple: wide rules for children, but state for grown-ups. This is not astir censoring adults oregon demonising societal media companies, it's astir helping radical to instrumentality responsibility.

"Government's relation isn't to constabulary code oregon archer adults what to think, but it should gully clear, enforceable lines to support children. A elemental property bounds for societal media does that. It protects kids decently and stops adults being treated similar children.

"Our argumentation draws a wide enactment for under-16s, portion protecting escaped prime and escaped code for adults. Now the authorities indispensable act."

It comes aft Sky News reported however an 18-year-old has been surviving with PTSD aft seeing a signaling of a unrecorded video of a antheral taking his ain beingness with a gun.

Social media level X, owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, has besides faced disapproval this week aft galore users, chiefly women, posted saying they had seen AI-generated intersexual images of themselves connected X done the instrumentality Grok.

X has said it takes enactment against amerciable content, including kid intersexual maltreatment material, "by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and moving with section governments and instrumentality enforcement arsenic necessary".

It past constricted representation editing connected Grok to paid subscribers - but the changes were described arsenic "insulting" by Downing Street.

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Under the Tories' policy, platforms specified arsenic TikTok and Snapchat would beryllium required to guarantee they are utilizing age-verification methods that would not trust connected immoderate signifier of authorities integer ID - for illustration done parental verification, biometric facial analysis, passport confirmation oregon different methods.

The Conservatives person pointed to enactment taken by different countries including Australia, which has raised the property bounds to 16 for societal media use, portion Malaysia has said it volition bash the same.

"The halfway intent of these profit-driven platforms is to monopolise attraction and monetise data, and arsenic specified they volition ne'er beryllium benign places for children to walk time. This bold inaugural marks a turning of the tide against societal media's exploitation of children and their data."

Sky News has approached Downing Street for comment.

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