The UK is testing digital curfews. Social media bans for teens might be next.

The future of expression online will in part rest on today’s debates over what age groups can legally use platforms deemed “social media” and what information we must provide to prove we’re adults and allowed to access them. This week, developments out of the UK and Australia continued the global age-verification campaign, as governments around the world push full steam ahead into dicey questions of who is allowed to speak, whether they can do so anonymously, and what responsibilities rest on platforms when teens are users.

The United Kingdom, never one to let an opportunity to regulate expression pass by, is currently in the “ping-pong” stage as the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill moves back and forth between the House of Lords and House of Commons. 

Members of Parliament are now debating whether and how to ban teens from social media, with the House of Commons rejecting an amendment from the Lords that advocates “highly-effective age assurance measures” to keep under-16s off of “all regulated user-to-user services.” 

Instead of keeping authority with the communications regulator OfCom, the proposed amendment from the Commons would grant broad authority to a government official to require companies to force kids under 18, not 16, offline. Old enough to drive a two-ton vehicle, yet not old enough to post about it. 

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains, it would give the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology power “to restrict internet access for young people and determine what content is considered harmful . . . just because she can.”

It would also grant the secretary power to target “addictive” features and, alarmingly, Virtual Private Network use for teens under 18. Any of these proposals should raise concerns from internet users, but none more than suggestions of VPN restrictions — a tactic most common among authoritarian regimes. 

Meanwhile, the UK government is rolling out a trial test enforcing bans and “digital curfews” on hundreds of UK teens. A control group of teens will have no changes to their internet experience while some will undergo a full social media ban and others will have curfews or time limits on their usage. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said results from the study “will give us the evidence we need to take the next steps, informed by the experiences of families themselves.”

To be clear: parents have always had the authority to set curfews — online and off — on their children. It has never required an act of government to tell kids to log off. 

Keir Starmer, too, said he’s “very keen” on rolling out a policy on teens’ social media use after the trial test concludes — and that he’s looking to the U.S. for inspiration on next steps. Starmer was specifically referring to last week’s ruling in California holding YouTube and Meta liable for designing “addictive” products accused of causing depression and other harms to a user at a young age. FIRE’s Ari Cohn explained why this and another high profile ruling against tech firms raise very serious concerns for free speech in the United States.

In Australia, where the government’s decision to launch a landmark teen social media ban last year set off a wave of global dominoes, regulators are updating their definition of “age-restricted social media platforms” amidst Reddit’s legal challenge against the ban on privacy and free expression grounds.

To continue “targeting the most harmful and addictive social media features that keep young Australians hooked online,” the government is updating its definition of such platforms as ones that adopt “recommender systems (algorithms)” that employ at least one of these features when users are logged in: “endless-feeds (infinite scroll),” “feedback features (such as displaying the number of ‘likes’ or ‘upvotes’ a user has received),” and “time-limited features (such as disappearing ‘stories.’)” Ten platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and Reddit, currently earn this designation.

These new designations were, according to Sky News Australia, “quietly” issued just ahead of the deadline for the government’s filing in response to Reddit’s challenge over the ban. The outlet says it “understands the updated rules” on the definition “could be an attempt to iron out the government’s legal defence against the social media giant.”

And, in light of the recent rulings against social media companies in the U.S., Australian law firms are now looking into whether similar efforts could succeed in Australia as an even more effective tool than government bans. “The [social] media ban has had very little impact on adolescent use of these technology platforms,” Shine Lawyers’ chief legal officer told Guardian Australia. “Meta has targeted generations of people who may never be able to detach from the grip of social media.” Another attorney said firms “expect the conversation around social media harm, regulation and accountability in Australia to accelerate in the wake of this decision in the U.S. overnight.”

The conversation around age verification has long centered on whether developments abroad could influence policy in the United States — but now the opposite may be true, too.