CHILDREN AND PARENTS TO PILOT SOCIAL MEDIA BANS – Pilot to take place in 300 teenage homes  

The Government launches pilots with hundreds of UK families on social media bans, curfews, and apps time limits. The Pilots will assess impact of restrictions on children, including on sleep, family life, and schoolwork. 

Running alongside the digital wellbeing consultation, which is closing on 26 May 2026 and has already received nearly 30,000 responses from parents and children, the pilots will last 6 weeks and test how different restrictions affect young people’s day-to-day lives.

Participants across all 4 nations of the UK will be assigned to one of 4 interventions being considered as part of our national consultation:

One group of the parents will be instructed on how to use parental controls to remove or entirely disable access to selected social media apps, practically mimicking the enforcement of a social media ban at home.

The second group will implement a one-hour-per-day cap on the most popular social media apps for teenagers, including Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat.

The third set of parents will block social media for their children between 9pm to 7am, leaving them access to the apps before and after school hours.

A final group will be recruited to continue to give children the same access to social media they already have, to provide a control group.

The data gathered will help ensure the government’s next steps to give children a healthier digital upbringing are based on the latest evidence