Social media bans and time limits to be tested in UK homes under new UK Government pilots
The UK government is piloting social media bans, daily time limits and overnight curfews in 300 homes across the country as it gathers evidence on how to regulate children’s use of apps including Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.
The six-week pilots, announced on Wednesday, will test four different approaches to restricting social media access for teenagers.
One group of parents will use parental controls to disable selected social media apps entirely, effectively mimicking a home-based ban.
A second group will impose a one-hour daily cap on the most popular platforms.
A third group will block social media access between 9pm and 7am each night, while a fourth group will act as a control and make no changes to their children’s current access.
Children and parents taking part will be interviewed at the start and end of the trial to assess the impact on sleep, schoolwork and family life.
Participants will also be asked about practical challenges, including difficulties setting up parental controls and any workarounds teenagers use to bypass them.
The pilots run alongside a public consultation on children’s digital wellbeing, which has already received nearly 30,000 responses from parents and children and remains open until 26 May 2026.
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said: “We are determined to give young people the childhood they deserve and to prepare them for the future.”
She said the pilots would “give us the evidence we need to take the next steps, informed by the experiences of families themselves.”
Separately, an independent scientific trial funded by the Wellcome Trust is set to begin later this year, examining the effects of reduced social media use among adolescents aged 12 to 15.
That study is co-led by the Bradford Institute for Health Research and University of Cambridge psychologist Professor Amy Orben, and will involve around 4,000 pupils across ten Bradford secondary schools.
Professor Orben said there was currently a lack of “critical insights” about how different social media policies might work in practice, and that large randomised controlled trials would allow researchers to “better understand the impact of social media and select interventions that work for young people as well as their families.”
The government said it would also publish new guidance on screen use for children under five later this week.
Parents and children can respond to the children’s digital wellbeing consultation at gov.uk before 26 May 2026.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology was asked whether Welsh families are included among the 300 pilot participants.
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