LONDON: Most teenagers would opt out of a plan by the British government to impose social media curfews on older teenagers, according to a poll published on Friday.
Plans to introduce an overnight social media curfew for children aged 16 and 17 were unveiled by the 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.
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 37pc 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 harm”, said Leanne Proctor, regulatory lead at the Online Responsibility Network, the organisation the survey was conducted for.
Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2026
