On 15 June the government confirmed that under-16s in the UK will be banned from six social media platforms: Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. The rules sit under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, are due to be laid before Parliament before Christmas, and take effect in spring 2027. The consultation behind them drew more than 116,000 responses, with nine in ten parents in support, and platforms that fail to comply face fines of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue, or 18 million pounds, whichever is greater.
If you are a parent, some part of you probably breathed out at that news. Fair enough. But before the whole subject gets filed under “handled”, it is worth being clear about what the ban covers, because the list of what it does not cover is longer than most of the headlines suggest.
What the ban does not touch
WhatsApp and Signal are excluded. For many families, especially with older children, the group chat is where the social life actually happens, and it stays exactly as it is.
Games are untouched. Roblox and Fortnite are not social media platforms under these rules. Roblox is among the services Ofcom has sent formal information requests to under the Online Safety Act, but no ban applies to it, and for many younger children it is the platform that matters most.
And 16 and 17 year olds are not banned at all. They get protective default settings, which they can turn off themselves.
What Australia learned first
Australia went first, and seven months in the picture is instructive. The eSafety regulator reports 4.7 million under-16 accounts restricted, which is a real effect and worth crediting. It has also raised significant concerns about how well the major platforms are complying, and the workaround stories arrived almost immediately. Children swap ways around age checks the way earlier generations swapped cheat codes. A national ban moves the defaults. It does not end the conversation in your house.
What is actually in your hands
The honest list is short, and none of it is new.
The rule itself. “Roblox off until homework is done” is a parenting decision, not a technology. Everything below is just a way of making it hold.
The platforms’ own settings. Roblox, YouTube and the consoles all have parental controls, and they are worth an evening of your time. They only cover that one service, and they are only as strong as the account they are attached to.
The free built-ins. Apple’s Screen Time and Google’s Family Link cost nothing and are worth setting up. Be realistic about them, though. Ofcom found that 89% of parents of 8 to 17 year olds say they have rules about their child’s mobile phone use, so the rule is rarely what is missing. What wobbles is making it hold, and that is not laziness. Passcodes get guessed or watched over a shoulder, clocks get changed, things get deleted and reinstalled, and there is a small cottage industry of online guides to getting around Screen Time. A free VPN is the classic way past a filter. If your child has not tried any of this, someone in their class has.
The router. Broadband filtering works and is often free, but it is the bluntest tool of the lot. It covers the whole house at once, usually cannot tell one child from another, and stops mattering the moment the device leaves your wifi.
Making rules hold
That gap, between rules that are easy to set and rules that actually hold, is the one we think matters most, and it is the one we are building for. HushHold, launching late 2026, lets a parent switch individual services like Roblox or YouTube off and back on for a child’s device from any browser on their own phone or computer, with nothing on the child’s device to find or delete. New access to a service on hold stops within about thirty seconds, and anything already open usually ends within a few minutes. It also blocks the VPN services children typically download to slip past filters, so the usual workaround does not connect. If that sounds like your house, there is a waitlist at hushhold.com.
The part that was always yours
None of this is a reason to be cynical about the ban. Fewer under-16s on TikTok by default is a better starting point, and nine in ten parents asked for it. But the starting point was never the hard part. The hard part is the ordinary, daily business of deciding what happens on the screens in your house, and that stays where it has always been. With you. On a good day, that is exactly where you would want it.
Sources: the UK government announcement of 15 June 2026, the Ofcom online safety industry bulletin of March 2026, the Australian eSafety Commissioner on social media age restrictions, House of Commons Library briefing CBP-10468, “Proposals to ban social media for children”, and Ofcom, Children and parents: media use and attitudes, May 2026.
The part that stays with you is the part we build for.
HushHold lets you hold a service like Roblox off, then switch it back on again, from your own phone or computer. Launching late 2026 in the UK and US.
Join the waitlist