Why the UK's social media ban has global relevance for TV & content businesses
Why the UK's social media ban has global relevance for TV & content businesses
And will YouTube launch a curated streaming service?
Jun 19, 2026
While the UK government’s announcement to restrict social media platforms for under 16s is a national story, it has thrown up all sorts of universally-relevant dimensions, which I’ve attempted to outline here.
I’m not going to rehash the details or get into how this restriction will (or won’t) work in practice. Instead I’ve focused on how this could signify the beginnings of some seismic tectonic shifts in our market, why a restriction has happened, the arguments around it, and what could come next: which if I’m right, could have major implications for the global streaming and connected TV market.
Before then, a quick note (and this is impossible to write without sounding like either a sycophant or self-possessed): I’ve spent pretty much all my career at the edge where the internet meets TV. I once had a boss who said ‘it is all about the work’, which is a sentiment that has stuck, because sitting half way between the glory of television and the thrill of the internet is a place where it is quite easy to lose your head. As a result, I’ve long gravitated towards those who manage to keep their heads by sticking close to the work, remaining enthused about our industry while also avoiding cynicism. I don’t think there’s been a single presentation for producers in the last 5+ years where I haven’t punted Entertainment Strategy Guy as the person to read if you want to understand our industry. Indeed, it was his newsletter that made me think perhaps I could have a go at this lark. That’s all preamble to say I’m delighted to be included in his annual blogroll of recommended newsletters, especially considering the following:
My criteria is deceptively simple: write great stuff, publish regularly, and be kind (which is easier said than done).
And hello to all those new subscribers who have come thanks to his recommendation, and I hope this newsletter is useful to you. I try to not be like anything else out there (after all, why bother?), and the purpose is to offer a unique take to those in the content industries - especially producers - to help you make informed decisions about the future. If you want to chat or would like me to come and talk to your teams about any of the themes I discuss here, then please do get in touch.
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Does the social ban for under 16s signal that tectonic plates are shifting?
A few months ago, I wrote a post wondering whether we are entering a new era, where the run that big tech had enjoyed over the previous 20+ years was coming to an end, thanks to industry-wide external forces.
If a crisis hits big tech, what happens to the TV & content industry?
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Apr 24
I also made a rash prediction that 2026 could be the year that the inexorable growth of YouTube might start to stutter, noting:
…there is also the growing concern from parents and educators about the impact of online platforms on kids - in part the content, but also a general worry about the zombification of childhood. Considering YouTube’s audience heavily skews towards kids, this could have a longer term impact on usage, even if it is only a minority of families who implement a ban on their offspring. This theme is explored in more detail here by Ian Whittaker A generational decline in online viewing.
And so here we are; is this social media ban for under 16s the distant sound of seismic shifts starting? After all, the bans in the UK and Australia don’t appear to be isolated, with countries across the world exploring what options they too are going to put in place.
Within this context, it is hardly surprising that the announcement of this ban has not been welcomed by the social platforms. Indeed, for TV and streamers, the predicted shift in ad spend conversely could be good news, as Helenor Gilmour of Beano Brain notes:
There is certainly going to be a period of readjustment… Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ have ad tiers now, and kids are all over those platforms. We will see a big shift [in ad spend] moving in that direction, they will be big winners and soak up quite a bit of the YouTube revenue. Traditional TV will also benefit around big family-friendly event shows such as I’m A Celebrity and Britain’s Got Talent.
However, this shouldn’t be seen as all things are rosy for TV and streaming. As outlined by Emma Scott, chair of NSPCC, ex BBC, Freeview and Beano Studios:
The first is a content problem we’ve lived with for some time. Over the last decade we’ve steadily allowed the market for British content aimed at older children and young people to shrink. Commercial broadcasters have stepped away, the BBC continues to play an important role for pre-schoolers, but it cannot carry the whole ecosystem on its own. The result is that there simply isn’t enough ambitious, originated British content being made for 8 to 16-year-olds. The second is a navigation problem. Even if yesterday’s changes pan out as intended, young people will still need help navigating a parallel world of content, culture and learning - without the wrapper of social/YouTube and in a void where they rejected traditional broadcasting a long time ago. They’ll still be asking what to watch, what to listen to, what to read, what to play and who to trust.
How YouTube is positioning itself
You might recall after the court case loss into the faulty design of YouTube and Meta, YouTube/Google made the following statement:
This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.
And this week, there were similar ‘YouTube is different’ sentiments appearing post the announcement of the ban. As an example, Jordan Schwarzenberger, CEO of Sidemen management company, Arcade Media, was quoted in Deadline saying:
The bit I have always disputed is YouTube has always been lumped in with this in a way that’s totally at odds with the way the platform works. …. YouTube should not be included in the ban because it is not social media. It’s an intentionality platform based on play-listing and curation – a well-curated search engine and a tool of immense educational value for young people.
It is hardly a surprise that this ban could be met with dismay by creators who depend on YouTube to reach teen audiences. This sentiment has also been echoed previously within the kids TV production market, who can look to YouTube as the sole place where some money can be made online, no matter how limited it is in comparison to non-kids content.
However, that doesn’t negate the issues that exist with user generated content and social platforms, and why this positioning of YouTube as something other than a social platform doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny - but it is interesting to see how long this line is pursued.
After all, social media covers a whole range of tech that enables the creation, sharing and aggregation of content in all its forms amongst communities and networks.
YouTube’s central premise is that anyone (‘broadcast yourself!’) can upload video content to their platform, for others to watch, like or comment on. Ergo, it is a social video platform, in all its splendour.
That is the whole proposition not only to the world, but specifically to those in the creative sectors, where you too can broadcast yourself and bypass those pesky gatekeepers. However, YouTube is a gatekeeper itself, as it patrols its platform for copyright infringement, illegal material and other videos that break its terms. Indeed, it has been demonetising and deleting all sorts of AI and slop channels of late, which has caused some consternation amongst certain creators, for example:
While YouTube has spent decades building quite extraordinary tech to reduce the dodgy content on its platform, as long as anyone can upload anything, a volume of this type of content will remain. Especially when you add in the financial incentives, which are the most appealing of all the social platforms.
While the content moderation policies and technology of all the platforms have evolved over time, the fundamental issue remains: as anyone can upload anything, the questions are how good are the systems, and what percentage of dodgy material getting through are we comfortable with? Is it 5%? 20%? 50%? For many parents, they’ve decided the answer is zero, which no user generated platform can achieve, which is why parenting groups and chats are being flooded with messages of relief at the announcement of this ban.
YouTube Shorts as a Reels/TikTok competitor
What is interesting is how the focus in the quote above is on YouTube as an ‘intentionality platform’ (meaning I think that you have to proactively browse and click on something to watch it, rather than be served a constant stream of autoplaying video).
This sidesteps all sorts of issues, one of which is how important the Shorts business is to YouTube. This is YouTube’s competitor to TikTok and Reels, and YouTube itself says it has 200bn Shorts views each and every day, which is 20+ each for every man, woman and child on the planet. They don’t explain how those views are distributed - either by age, demographic or territory. However, if you log in on a mobile, you get a far heavier Shorts experience than you do on a desktop.
For those creators popular with under 16s, you can browse here on MrBeast’s View Stats website to see what percentage of their views are Shorts. Here is MrBeast’s own split - you can see how for years, his long form views made up more of a percentage of his overall views, and how in the last 28 days, over 90% are Shorts (in the grey):
So while YouTube has created functionality to restrict Shorts if desired, the takeaway is generally speaking, YouTube Shorts = TikTok = Reels, and so should be treated the same from a child protection perspective.
The shapeshifting nature of your content feed
It is also interesting to note how people’s perceptions of what is appropriate for teen audiences is heavily influenced by their own experience of YouTube. So I’ve seen a raft of comments from people where they are watching all sorts of wonderful old BBC documentaries, and assuming that this reflects the same experience for teens.
The whole point is your experience on the platform is personalised by all sorts of data YouTube has about you such as your age, demographics, what device you are using, and what you’ve watched previously. To put it crudely and simply, if you watch BBC documentaries, you’ll get more of that. If you are watching dodgy content, you’ll get more of that instead. And so all of us need to understand that our own individual feeds on YouTube are bespoke to us, and therefore, the content pool on the platform really matters. Just because you aren’t seeing it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there and doesn’t mean it isn’t being served to others.
YouTube said it was a ‘vital resource for young people’ and that a ban risked pushing children towards ‘anonymous, less safe services’. Google cited research they commissioned from Livity that 95% of UK teens surveyed had said watching videos helps with school work.
And here in lies the challenge with user generated social video platforms. Of course, there are many great educational creators and channels on social video platforms. However, there also is a whole host of inaccurate and gross slop too. I previously outlined the example of the Viking sacking of Lindisfarne in 793, where I stopped counting at 100 near identical videos, all with similar revolting thumbnails of an event that never happened (I just checked, many of these are still there on YouTube, albeit with tiny views so I wonder if many have been demonetised rather than deleted).
In the spirit of the Scotland fans having a blast in Boston at the World Cup, can I use a Glaswegian phrase used to poke fun at those from Edinburgh? Where they’d say ‘ aw fur coat, nae knickers’.
Podcasting has major issues too
One company that is notable by its absence on the social media ban list, but is a source of frustration for parents, is Spotify and podcasts in particular (which therefore is an issue for YouTube and Apple too).
I’ve written about this issue in the past, but to summarise: Spotify used to be just music, and therefore its child-protection involved relying on the explicit label put on music with swearing in it, familiar from the old world of CDs and tapes (plus it has a Spotify Kids standalone app, for under 13s).
Spotify’s parents’ guide reflects the aged 13 cliff edge that is common to many of the platforms. To summarise, up until 13, as well as the dedicated kids app there are managed accounts where podcasts and audiobooks are unavailable, alongside other tools for parents. After 13 however, then the world of podcasts and audiobooks are available to teens, and here the platform relies on whether the creator has flagged issues with their podcast, a level of machine learning, as well as whether users report individual podcasts for inappropriateness. So while a user can say they aren’t interested in a particular artist or creator, this again leaves it up to the kid to proactively manage their feed.
Many parents complain that the podcasts and audiobooks their teens are being served are inappropriate for a whole range of reasons: acres of f’ing and blinding, porn, adult content, violent themes and so on.
The existing tools are often dreadful
For those without young kids, you might not have had the joyful experience of trying to use the available child protection tools. If this is you, then I have nothing but envy.
It is hard to express in words how frustrating the existing parental control tools are, both on particular platforms, but also most importantly, how they interact with each other and between app and device settings. Patchy, glitchy, inconsistent, where each platform has taken its own approach, which ranges from hard to use but gives enough of a bandaid to protect kids, through to downright useless, where gaping holes mean a parent’s only choice is to ban their kids entirely.
Hours a week are spent by parents worrying about this issue - watching videos or reading forums on which particular restrictions to put in, talking to fellow parents as they feel their way in the dark, only to realise (often too late) they’ve left gaping holes in their armour. This often is at router or app/platform level, rather than a kid’s individual device. In other words, parents don’t realise without restrictions on their router, then it is fairly easy to bypass whatever device limitations have been put in place. And at an app/platform level, there often is a conversation that runs along the heart-sinking lines of ‘oh no, I thought that app was fine! My kid loves it!’.
I remember going to a presentation years ago from the founder of the kids marketing agency Super Awesome, where he made the point that many of the founders of social platforms were young men without kids, so as a result, child safety often ended up far from their minds when managing and establishing their companies. As they grew up, got married and had kids, it is notable how many have commented publicly on their own approach to limiting screens and social for their own children: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, YouTube’s Neal Mohan, Evan Spiegel of Snap. All have said a variation on the theme around limiting screen time.
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