UK Unveils Under-16 Social-Media Ban to Take Effect Spring 2027

In 1938 the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act pulled children out of factories; in 1996 the Communications Decency Act tried—and failed—to clean up the early web. Starmer’s prohibition echoes that instinct to shield minors from each new medium while exposing a deeper 21st-century trend: states re-asserting sovereignty over Big Tech by tying real-world ID to online access. Whether the measure works or unravels like Australia’s, it pushes liberal democracies toward an authenticated, less anonymous internet. A hundred years from now historians may cite 2026 as either the beginning of the end for open, identity-free cyberspace or just another moral panic, akin to the 1950s comic-book scare and 1990s video-game backlash, that fizzled once technology and society realigned.