The accountability shift of the UK’s under-16 social media ban may favour UK gambling operators. The public narrative around messaging, promotion and targeting no longer focuses solely on bookmakers, but the wider platform being used.

The Labour government and PM Keir Starmer have vowed to “give kids their childhood back” via a long anticipated ban on under-16s engaging with social media platforms. The ban will shift the boundaries for marketers across high-risk sectors such as gambling.

As with any other industry in the modern digital age, gambling companies make extensive use of social media for marketing and promotions purposes. These campaigns often find themselves in the firing line of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). 

Gambling and social media have a complex relationship that goes beyond surface level exchanges on marketing into deeper discussions on audience safeties, the management and control of campaigns, and how consumers are targeted, and corporate responsibility.

SBC News’ Ted Orme-Claye takes a look at today’s announcement and what it could mean for UK gambling and its diverse make-up of stakeholders.

What will the social media ban cover?

Australia made headlines around the world when it banned social media for under-16s in 2024. Though criticised by Media and thinktanks at the time, the social media ban proved a popular policy with Australian parents. 

The UK plans to follow the exact same model, focusing on user-to-user platforms which enable social interaction, posting of material and content, and feature algorithms.

The plan will cover five of the biggest social media platforms in the UK:

• Facebook, owned by Meta, with over 55 million UK users
• Instagram, also owned by Meta, with over 38 million users
• TikTok, the most Gen Z-associated platform with over 30 million monthly UK users across all demographics
• Snapchat, with over 23.9 million UK users
• YouTube, which has over 35.9 million monthly UK users and is the second most watched media platform in the country after the BBC according to some reports

The ban will not apply to messaging services like WhatsApp or Signal. 

It will be applied via blocking measures and ‘highly effective age assurance’ (HEEA) to prevent children from bypassing safeguards. It will be supported via an Ofcom rapid study on effective age assurance for verifying whether someone is over 16 years old.

Starmer remarked: “Parents want to keep their kids safe and happy, but the online world has made that harder than ever. I’ve heard first hand from families crying out for change and we will do right by them.

“That’s why we’re going further than any country in the world by banning social media for under-16s and putting wider protections in place to give kids their childhood back. 

“This is a line in the sand. Tech giants had their chance and failed, but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.”

How will it work? And who backs it?

The ban in Australia hasn’t gone entirely according to plan. 

According to some estimates, a large number of Australian under-16s are still using social media platforms, up to 60% according to the Molly Rose Foundation.

Nonetheless, the UK government plans to replicate it. 

It also plans to go further by placing ‘world leading blocks’ on functions like live streaming and stranger communication, applying this to various online services including ‘gaming sites’ – it can be assumed this is referring to sites like Twitch, popular with video game live streamers.

Deepak Twari, Chief Executive Officer Officer of age estimation tools developer Privately SA, which works with Snapchat, Twitch and Discord, said: “It’s become increasingly obvious that children need stronger protection when navigating digital spaces, especially platforms designed around addictive engagement, endless scrolling and attention capture.”

“But the key element to age verification in the UK – and anywhere in fact – is how it is done and we must not solve one problem by creating another: a surveillance infrastructure for children.”

Despite some reservations about the effectiveness of the Australian ban, the government’s plans seem to have broad support from the British public. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), states that nine-in-10 parents are behind the ban.

This is backed by polling by YouGov, carried out for the Institute for Public Policy Research (PPR), which found that around eight in 10 people across the UK support either banning under-16s from using social media entirely, or at least forcing social media companies to remove features and content deemed inappropriate for children.

The IPPR is fully in support of the under-16s ban, and cites the polling data to back up its argument. The poll found that 44% of the public prefer an outright ban while 39% prefer tighter regulation. 

Parents of children under 16 were 54% in favour of a ban while 36% preferred stricter regulation, and just 11% of adults and 7% of parents with children under-16 opposed any form of regulation or ban.

Avnee Morjaria, Associate Director of the IPPR, said: “A blanket social media ban for under-16s is the only effective option. Not because technology is inherently bad, but because we are allowing childhood itself to be shaped for the worse by algorithms. 

“Childhood should be defined by real-world experiences, friendships and opportunities to grow, not by an endless competition for attention and approval. The greatest loss of the smartphone age is not privacy; it’s childhood itself.”

A win for betting marketers? Maybe…

Finally, this brings us to the niche of this argument. For most of the general public, how this ban impacts the gambling sector will, quite understandably, not be the first thing on their minds, but for marketers and advertisers in the UK industry, it could be worth considering.

Obviously, first things first, this is not going to be a loss for the UK betting industry, for the clear reason that no company is accepting bets from under-16s anyway – at least they shouldn’t be if they want to keep their Gambling Commission licence and avoid a hefty fine.

One of the first considerations should be the interpretation of the CAP Code, the guidance that governs how British marketing and advertising professionals and companies conduct their business.

The CAP Code notably prevents operators from marketing deemed to have a strong appeal to under-18s. The ASA’s interpretation of this has seen many operators ordered to remove social media posts following public complaints, mainly due to sports personalities being featured in posts. 

Notable cases of this included posts featuring images of Erling Haaland, Harry Kane, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Son Heung-min, Lewis Hamilton and Gary Neville ordered removed. 

Others, however, like posts featuring boxer Chris Eubank and former footballer Thierry Henry, were given the green light by the ASA due to the sportspeople involved not being deemed to have strong appeal to under-18s. 

The lines for industry marketers are a little blurred to say the least. However, at least hypothetically, the social media ban could provide some respite.

The ASA often assesses a sportsperson’s social media following when making its decisions. In the case of Betway and Lewis Hamilton, the authority factored Hamilton’s social media following of 1.6 million under-18 users into its decision, for example

Post-ban, operators will still be held accountable to the CAP Code, but with a much smaller number of the under-18s demographic active on social media, this could give operators more room to feature sports personalities in marketing.

For companies which count social media as a valuable part of the marketing arsenal – like Paddy Power, which has launched its own TikTok channel and is embarking on an active push on the platform – the under-16s ban may add a level of reassurance that their activity won’t land them in trouble.

SBC News received the following statement from the ASA:  “Protecting children from harmful ads online will always be a key priority for us.”

“As the government develops its proposals, we’ll continue to enforce the advertising rules, working with platforms, advertisers and other regulators to help keep young people safe from potential advertising harms, while also monitoring how children’s online behaviour evolves to ensure protections remain effective wherever they spend time online.”

Are gov’t and industry finally on the same page?

Advertising aside, the social media ban also shows an overarching theme – that the government is growing increasingly frustrated with social media and the big tech firms that run the platforms, frustration also shared by the industry.

Announcing the ban, Liz Kendal, Technology Secretary, said that “tech companies have had countless opportunities to keep children safe, yet they have failed to act” and that the government is “taking power away from the tech giants and putting it back in parents’ hands”.

The betting industry’s main frustration with big tech is that there has been an apparent unwillingness or inability to combat the presence of black market bookmakers and casinos across UK social media sites.

This was the subject of a recent open letter penned by Grainne Hurst, CEO of the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) trade body. The BGC has been very vocal about the need for big tech firms to clamp down on illegal gambling activity on their platforms.

So too has the Gambling Commission, with Tim Miller, its Executive Policy Director, remarking at the ICE industry trade show back in January 2026 that Facebook and Instagram owner Meta “simply choose not to look” for black market ads on their platforms.

For the betting industry, the under-16s social media ban is a sign that the government are, frankly, fed up with social media and big tech – just as much as the regulated betting industry is as well. 

For an industry which has found itself at loggerheads with the government on topics like taxation and affordability, it’s refreshing to find itself on the same page as the government on yet another topic this year – the first being the joint commitment to clamp down on illegal gambling, with the government launching its taskforce earlier in the year.

The news comes just two weeks after the ASA revealed that it and the Gambling Commission would be working closer with big tech firms to detect gambling ads on social media via the new Active Ad Monitoring System.

The under-16 ban could be an unintended step in the right direction for bookmakers, though this will hinge on how effectively it is implemented and how it fits in alongside existing regulations around operator marketing and promotions.

According to DSIT, the first set of regulations could come into effect by spring 2027, with the government using powers under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act alongside secondary legislation to achieve its aims.