The under-16 social media ban: what it means for schools, and how to prepare children for life online
On 15 June 2026, the UK government announced it will ban children under 16 from a range of social media platforms, including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X (but not messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal, or YouTube Kids). The plan is to bring legislation before Parliament before Christmas, with protections expected to come into force in Spring 2027, under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. It follows Australia, which introduced a similar restriction.
For schools, this is a significant and welcome moment. Like any good step, it works best with the right support alongside it, because a ban changes one thing and leaves another to teaching.
What the ban actually does
The ban does something real. It removes easy access to the platforms where a lot of harm currently happens, and it shifts some responsibility onto the companies that run them. For a Year 7 who’s been pulled into a late-night group chat, or a child whose feed has quietly taught them to compare and despair, that’s not nothing. It buys time, and time, for a developing brain, matters.
So this is not an argument against the ban. We welcome it, and we want to help it work. It is about what has to sit alongside it.
What children still need to learn
A ban removes access. It doesn’t remove the need for the skill.
Three things stay true the day after it lands:
Children will still be online. On messaging apps, in games, on every platform the ban doesn’t cover. The conversation simply moves.
They will still turn 16. And step into the full, unfiltered feed, often no better prepared than the day before, unless someone has taught them how to handle it.
The unkindness we worry about was never really about the platform. The pile-on, the screenshot passed around, the silent exclusion from the group, those are about how children treat each other. Take away the app, and the instinct goes looking for a new home.
A ban can’t teach a child to pause before they post, to notice when a friend is being frozen out, to speak up, or to be kind when no one is watching. Those are skills. And skills are taught, deliberately, in lessons, the same way we teach reading.
Why online-safety education matters *more* now, not less
It would be easy to read a ban as “problem handled.” The opposite is true. A ban is the moment to double down on teaching, because:
The years before 16 are exactly when children should be learning the skills they’ll need at 16, in a safe, guided setting, not on their own in the deep end.
“Smart, safe and kind online” is a whole-school culture, not a one-off assembly. It shows up in behaviour, in how children speak to each other, and in how safe they feel.
Children who can name harm, resist a pile-on, and ask “are you okay?” online are the same children who do it in the corridor. Online kindness and offline kindness are one skill.
This isn’t just our view. It’s what the independent evidence on social and emotional learning (SEL) shows.
What the evidence says, from independent bodies
The skills that keep a child safe and kind online are social and emotional skills, and there is strong, independent research on what teaching them does.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), the government’s what-works body for schools, finds that social and emotional learning adds, on average, about four months of additional academic progress over a year, alongside improvements in behaviour and relationships. (EEF, Social and emotional learning)
A landmark meta-analysis by Durlak and colleagues (2011), covering 213 school programmes and 270,034 pupils, found SEL produced an 11-percentile-point gain in academic achievement, as well as better behaviour and attitudes. (Durlak et al., Child Development, 2011)
The context the ban responds to is real: around 1 in 5 children in England aged 8 to 16 now has a probable mental health condition (NHS England, 2023).
In other words, teaching children to understand feelings, manage themselves, and treat each other well isn’t a soft extra. It’s one of the best-evidenced things a school can do, for wellbeing and for attainment. A device ban can’t deliver any of it. Teaching can.
What we teach: our film-led online safety workshops, part of the Kindness in School Programme
At Be Kind Movement, our online safety workshops run across seven lessons, each built around a short film. Not “don’t use it”, but “here’s how to be smart, safe and kind online.” It covers cyberbullying and online harm, online friendships, and telling real from fake, using short films, discussion, role play and a kindness task each week. They sit inside our Kindness in School Programme (KISP) for ages 4 to 16, delivered face to face or via Zoom, in 3, 5 or 10-week plans.
Film is what makes it land: children feel a situation before they are told about it, then talk, role-play and act on it. That is what sets our approach apart from a worksheet or a one-off assembly. It’s the same film-led method behind everything we do, and we measure it. Across our work so far: 1,682 children reached, 183 workshops, 37 schools, and 100% of the teachers we’ve worked with say they would recommend us. In our March 2025 pilot of the wider programme (293 children across 6 schools), children’s empathy scores rose from 79% to 97%, and every teacher reported a kinder mindset in their class.
The goal was never just to keep children off social media for a few more years. It’s to raise children who handle it well when they’re on it. And from this December, our digital platform, Be Kind Academy, brings the whole programme online, so a school anywhere can run it.
For parents, over the summer
If you’re a parent reading this in the holidays, you don’t need to wait for 2027. The single most useful thing you can do is make kindness offline a habit, because kindness offline fuels kindness online. Try one phone-free hour a day: talk, play, do one kind act together. A screen break lands better with a plan. For more ideas, see our piece on building healthier phone habits for a kinder family life.
Free download, the Kind Online Quiz. We’ve made a free, printable one-page quiz to do together in that phone-free hour. It isn’t a passwords-and-strangers test. It’s eight short “what would you do?” moments about being kind and stepping in for each other online, with a few questions to talk through and a simple promise to sign. Download the Kind Online Quiz (answer key included)(it won’t be a link but a PDF download).
A ban buys time. The skill is what lasts.
The under-16 ban is a welcome step, and a shared goal. The work that sits alongside it, teaching children to be kind, to spot harm, and to look after themselves and each other online, is what happens in classrooms and at kitchen tables. That is where schools, parents and organisations like ours work hand in hand with the new rules.
If your school is thinking about what comes after the ban, let’s talk. Find out about our online safety workshops, part of our Kindness in School Programme, or get in touch to bring a free workshop to your school.
FAQ
Does the under-16 social media ban mean schools don’t need to teach online safety?
No, arguably the opposite. Children will still be online on messaging apps and in games, and they will still turn 16. The years before are exactly the time to teach the skills, which is what a structured online-safety and kindness programme does. Independent evidence (EEF, Durlak et al. 2011) shows teaching these social and emotional skills improves both wellbeing and attainment.
What are Be Kind Movement’s online safety workshops?
A seven-lesson set of workshops that teaches children to be smart, safe and kind online. It covers cyberbullying and online harm, online friendships, and telling real from fake, using a short film, discussion, role play and a weekly kindness task. It runs as part of our Kindness in School Programme (KISP).
What ages and formats is it for?
Ages 4 to 16, with content matched to the age group, so a Year 5 or 6 class (around age 10) gets KS2-appropriate films and discussion. It’s delivered face to face or via Zoom, in 3, 5 or 10-week plans, and from December 2026 it’s also available online through Be Kind Academy.
Is there evidence that teaching kindness and online safety actually works?
Yes. The EEF finds social and emotional learning adds around four months of additional academic progress a year. The Durlak et al. (2011) meta-analysis of 270,034 pupils found an 11-percentile-point gain in achievement. In our own March 2025 pilot, children’s empathy scores rose from 79% to 97%, and 100% of teachers we’ve worked with would recommend us.
How does this fit the “4 Cs” of online safety (content, contact, conduct and commerce)?
The “4 Cs” describe the main online risks: content (what children see, including fake or harmful material), contact (who can reach them), conduct (how they and others behave) and commerce (scams, ads and pressure to spend). Our online safety workshops work hardest on conduct, where cyberbullying and exclusion live, and builds the judgement behind content (telling real from fake) and contact (healthy online friendships). On commerce, we also make sure cost is never the barrier on the school’s side: we deliver our workshops free to schools in low-income and deprived areas, and our upcoming Be Kind Academy cross-subsidises free access for schools in deprived areas.
Do you run an online safety or digital behaviour assembly for primary and secondary schools?
Yes. Our online safety workshops run for ages 4 to 16, with content matched to each stage from KS1 through secondary, and they can open with a whole-school assembly. Children learn to be smart, safe and kind online through a short film, discussion, role play and a weekly kindness task, delivered face to face or via Zoom in 3, 5 or 10-week plans. They sit inside our Kindness in School Programme (KISP), and we offer them free to low-income and deprived schools.
If a ban removes the apps, won’t children just move to group chats and gaming?
Largely, yes, and that is the point. The ban does not cover messaging apps or gaming platforms like Roblox, so the late-night group chat and the in-game pile-on carry on. The unkindness was never really about one app; it is about how children treat each other, which is a skill you teach. Our workshops cover online friendships, cyberbullying and reading real from fake, so children carry the same kindness into a group chat or a game that they use in the corridor.
Is there a free online safety resource parents and teachers can use over the summer?
Yes. From August 2026 you can download our free Kind Online Quiz, a one-page printable for home or the classroom. It is an original Be Kind Movement resource built around kindness and stepping in for each other online, and it works as a phone-free-hour activity at home or a settling-in discussion at school. It gives a taste of our online safety workshops, part of our Kindness in School Programme, which teach the full skills across seven lessons for ages 4 to 16.
How does my school book the online safety workshops?
Find out about our online safety workshops, part of our Kindness in School Programme, on our site, or get in touch and we’ll help you choose the right plan for your school.
We’ve devised our own Kind Online Quiz for your children. Give it a try and let us know how you get on!