UK law enforcement is done waiting for tech companies to sort themselves out. The National Crime Agency (NCA) and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) have jointly called for children under 16 to be blocked from any social media, gaming apps, or AI that fails to disable what they describe as “high-risk” features.
This comes as the UK government is actively consulting on whether to introduce a full social media ban for under-16 users, per the BBC.
UK police want these six features to be banned from kids’ apps
Police want platforms to disable six features they say are enabling serious harm to children online. These include strangers being able to contact kids directly, private or encrypted messaging, algorithms pushing harmful content, nude image sharing, weak age checks, and anything that makes children easily discoverable by other users.
A lot of these are already covered under the UK’s Online Safety Act, which lets Ofcom, the UK’s official communications watchdog, investigate and fine platforms that break the rules. Police want to go further, though, pushing for legislation that blocks under-16s from any platform offering these features entirely, along with device-level nudity controls for all under-18s.
The online threat to children is getting worse
The stats are genuinely alarming. The NCA logged 92,000 reports of potential child sexual abuse activity online in 2025, and NCA director general Graeme Biggar says victims are getting younger, and that children are increasingly becoming offenders too.
NPCC chair Gavin Stephens put it bluntly, calling the internet a “wild west” where regulation just has not kept up. The government responded by backing Ofcom to go after platforms that do not comply, and said it is exploring everything from age limits and app curfews to outright bans.
These proposals do not go as far as Australia’s full under-16 social media ban, but the message from UK police is pretty clear. Time is up for tech companies dragging their feet on child safety.
