UK to Require ID or Face Scan for All New Social Media Accounts

The UK government will require anyone opening a new social media account to verify their age by uploading government-issued ID or passing a facial age scan, under regulations announced June 15, 2026 by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The rules, expected to take effect in spring 2027, will ban under-16s from user-to-user platforms that run algorithmic feeds, including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, and X. Messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal are explicitly excluded, alongside YouTube Kids and narrowly defined educational, e-commerce, and music streaming services. The policy is modeled on Australia's social media age ban, which took effect in December 2025, and builds on age-verification checks that adult sites serving UK visitors have already implemented since July 2025 under the Online Safety Act.

Beyond the age threshold, the government plans wider restrictions on high-risk features. Livestreaming and the ability for strangers to contact children will be locked down across a broader range of services, including gaming platforms like Roblox, where chat and related features will be restricted for younger users. To avoid a "cliff-edge at 16," these stranger-contact and livestreaming restrictions will also apply by default to 16- and 17-year-olds. Separately, AI "romantic companion" chatbots that simulate sexual or roleplay scenarios will be required to enforce an 18+ minimum, with intimate functions restricted for under-18s across AI chatbot services more broadly. The government is also consulting on overnight curfews and break mechanisms in infinite scrolling feeds, with further details promised in July.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall framed the move as a power shift from "tech giants" to parents, while Starmer cited a national consultation that drew more than 116,000 responses, with nine in ten parents supporting an under-16 ban and two-thirds of young people agreeing that under-16s should be kept off at least some platforms. Cybersecurity and privacy experts, however, have warned the checks are easy to circumvent with a VPN/proxy detector-bypassing connection, put sensitive identity documents and biometric templates at risk of large-scale breaches, and have been rushed into policy with limited parliamentary scrutiny. Long-standing accounts are largely exempt from verification, but anyone signing up fresh in the UK will soon be unable to create an anonymous profile.

For users concerned about the data being collected, a privacy checkup can help identify what trackers and identifiers are active during the age-verification process, while a browser fingerprint test reveals how much uniquely identifying information the browser itself leaks before any ID is even submitted. With a mandatory national database of IDs and face scans effectively being created, the breach risk extends well beyond the platforms themselves to the third-party age-assurance vendors handling the verification flow.