LONDON (AP) — Britain will ban children under 16 from using a range of social media apps including Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube to protect young people from harmful content and excessive screen time, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday,
Starmer told a news conference that he will fight back if technology companies resist the move, and acknowledged some teens would try to find their way around a ban. But he said he is “not prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children.”
“Every parent can see it with their own eyes. Social media is making children unhappy,” said Starmer, who has two teenage children. “I’ve heard first hand from families crying out for change and we will do right by them.”
The move, expected to take effect early next year, makes the U.K. part of a growing global movement to tighten online safety for children. Australia, Canada, Brazil and Indonesia have introduced legislation or announced age-based restrictions or requirements for children’s access to social media. France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are among others studying or developing similar approaches.
The U.K. plans to follow the same model for a social media ban as Australia, which last year became the first country to bar under-16s from holding social media accounts. Platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to exclude children younger than 16 could be punished with multimillion-dollar fines.
The U.K. said its ban will apply to platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, but not YouTube Kids or messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal. Starmer stressed that enforcement action will target tech companies, not children.
The prime minister also said he will go further than Australia’s measures.
He said the government will act to prevent strangers from contacting children on gaming and livestreaming platforms. Authorities are also considering additional measures including overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for those under 18. More details are expected next month.
Starmer’s announcement met with mixed reactions
The decision follows a public comment period in which the government got 116,000 responses from parents, the tech industry and children. The number of responses was second only to one seeking input about same-sex marriage in 2012.
The vast majority of respondents — more than 90% — wanted an under-16 ban, the government said.
Esther Ghey, whose 16-year-old daughter Brianna was killed in 2023 by two teenagers who had accessed harmful content online, said the ban would “potentially save so many children’s lives,” but had to be accompanied by other measures.
NSPCC, a leading children’s charity, praised the government’s ambition but urged authorities to ensure platforms roll out “robust age checks” and effectively enforce the policy.
Others are more skeptical.
Critics including the Open Rights Group have expressed concerns about age verification companies and how users’ private data is protected.
Reacting on Monday, a spokesperson for YouTube warned that a blanket social media restriction could “push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less-safe services.”
Starmer acknowledged the challenges, but said success for the ban would mean “a massive drop off of children on social media” and “a cultural change, a sense that actually you can grow up differently.”
Starmer, elected just under two years ago, is under pressure to step down from members of his own party over what they see as poor leadership and could face a leadership challenge in the coming days or weeks. He is seeking to bring in consequential measures that can serve as a legacy.
The U.S. has opposed the move
The ban could further inflame tensions with the U.S., which has warned that regulations should be narrow and not violate free speech protections, according to a statement from the U.S. Embassy in London. It said it was also concerned that regulations would place greater burdens on American technology companies.
Starmer said he expected to discuss the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders at a Group of Seven summit in France that starts Monday.
“I honestly think that across world leaders, there has always been a recognition that leaders have to take steps to protect children,” he said. “I don’t think that’s controversial. There will always be arguments as to exactly what the limits of that are and what rules should be in place, but I don’t see that as a problem.”
Jon Crowcroft, a communications systems professor at the University of Cambridge, said people supporting social bans are well-meaning but probably misguided, and changes could prevent children from accessing sites they need.
“There is a real risk this will drive some users to worse sites and policing devices is close to impossible technically,” Crowcroft said. “Policing platforms is far easier, if only regulators would bother.”
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Associated Press writer Jill Lawless contributed to this story.

BANGKOK (AP) — World share prices soared Monday after a tentative deal was announced on ending the Iran war and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, while oil prices fell more than $4 a barrel.
The future for the S&P 500 was up 1.2% and that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1%, auguring likely early gains for Wall Street.
In early European trading, Germany’s DAX advanced 1.7% to 25,066.48, while the CAC 40 in Paris also added 1.7% to 8,410.36.
Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.8% to 10,553.18.
After repeated false starts, investors were betting that this time, the war might end. U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed the initial agreement and authorized an end to the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.
Iran confirmed it but signaled that implementation would not start until a signing that Pakistan said would be held Friday in Switzerland. Broader negotiations on issues like Iran’s nuclear program are expected to continue over the next 60 days.
In early trading Monday, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, fell $4.08 to $83.25 per barrel. U.S. benchmark crude lost $4.51 to $80.37 per barrel.
It may take months for oil prices to stabilize after the disruptions from the war caused them to surge, pushing costs up for gasoline and many other products. Energy experts said shipping and insurance companies will want to be confident the pact will hold, ensuring that oil and gas supplies will flow freely enough for the world’s needs to be met.
“The reopening of Hormuz is a relief valve, not a full peace dividend. The market can remove some crude panic, but it still has to price the gap between a headline, a signature, and a regime that actually complies,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a report.
Still, the news was a huge relief for markets that have been roiled since the conflict began in late February.
Stocks rallied in Asia, where Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 gained 5% to 69,317.50 as the benchmark logged another record high.
Buying was heaviest for technology shares, especially those related to artificial intelligence. The boom in AI has been driving gains in Japan, where the benchmark has gained more than 80% in the last year.
“This is great news,” said Takashi Hiroki, chief strategist at Monex. “Buying by foreign investors is leading the market with expectations of easing tensions around the situation in the Middle East. Then the decline in New York crude oil futures is supporting this positive market.”
The Kospi in Seoul surged 5.2% to 8,545.98.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng gained 0.6% to 24,864.13, while the Shanghai Composite index was up 1.6% to 4,096.47.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 advanced 1.3% to 8,922.90. Taiwan’s Taiex was up 2.8%, and the Sensex in India rose 1.2%.
On Friday, U.S. stocks advanced as Musk’s SpaceX soared in its highly anticipated debut on Wall Street.
The strong start suggested plenty of demand still exists among investors for AI after SpaceX stock leaped 19.2% in its first day of trading. That gave Elon Musk’s rocket company a total value of $2.1 trillion, making it bigger than Exxon Mobil, Bank of America and Coca-Cola combined. In addition to building rockets, SpaceX also owns the artificial intelligence company xAI.
The S&P 500 added 0.5% to close out its 10th winning week in the last 11. The Dow industrials climbed 353 points, or 0.7%, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.3%.
This week will bring interest rate decisions from the Federal Reserve and Bank of England, on Thursday. On Tuesday, the Bank of Japan is due to announce its monetary policy updates. It is widely expected to raise its benchmark interest rate to 1% from the current 0.75%.
That would be the highest rate in more than 30 years.
In other dealings early Monday, the dollar slipped to 160.17 Japanese yen from 160.12 yen late Friday. The euro climbed to $1.1608 from $1.1578.
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Senior producer Mayuko Ono in Tokyo contributed to this report.

According to multiple media reports, Jassy first raised concerns about the model with senior administration officials on Thursday after Amazon researchers used a series of prompts to get the Mythos-class model to provide information about cyberattacks that was supposed to be restricted.
It is unclear if Amazon was testing Fable for vulnerabilities in response to a White House request or if the company conducted the tests completely of its own accord. Politico quoted an unnamed source familiar with Amazon’s discussions as saying the government asked Amazon for feedback on the new Anthropic model.
An Amazonspokesperson previously told Fortune: “As a leading cloud provider that serves a large number of private and public sector customers, it’s not uncommon for governments to seek our counsel on potential security risks. When they occur, we don’t share the details of these discussions.”
Semafor also reported, citing unnamed sources, that the U.S. government suspected that a Chinese-linked group had already used the jailbreak Amazon discovered. But the publication said it was unclear how the government had arrived at this suspicion or what evidence they had to support it. And an Anthropic spokesperson told the publication that the White House did not raise Chinese access to Mythos in its conversations with the company, and that Anthropic prohibits access to its products from within China.
What followed were several calls between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and senior administration officials, according to Politico, during which Amodei argued the security bypass found by Amazon was narrow rather than a full jailbreak of the model’s safeguards.
A source familiar with Anthropic told Fortune the company was given 90 minutes to pull its newest model and was given no previous communication of a national security threat.
Still, by Friday evening, the Commerce Department had stepped in to use national security export controls to bar Anthropic from distributing Fable 5 and its underlying model, Mythos 5, to foreign nationals, a category that includes people outside the U.S. as well as non-citizens working inside the country, including employees within Anthropic. Given the scope, the AI lab said it had no option but to disable both models for all users.
Now, according to the person familiar with Anthropic, senior technical staff are in DC to meet with White House officials.
The move marks the first time the U.S. government has used export controls to halt access to a commercial AI model already widely used by the public. The unprecedented step has sparked concern from politicians around the world and intensified calls for sovereign AI, the idea that countries should control the AI models, infrastructure, and data that underpin critical technology, rather than depend on systems that can be restricted or withdrawn by a foreign government.
Critics have described the export controls as government overreach. AI policy expert Dean Ball, who briefly served in the Trump administration, said on X that he could not tell whether the move amounted to “lawfare against Anthropic in particular or extreme national-security hawkery,” adding that it was “simply cartoonish.” Ben Murphy, a non-resident fellow at the Institute for Progress, said the directive marked “another step on the balkanization of technology,” warning it could discourage AI labs from being transparent with the government about AI models in the future.
The decision to use export controls could also reshape how the government treats future AI releases more broadly, potentially signaling more government oversight into how powerful new AI models are rolled out. An administration official told Axios that the government does not view other models on the market as posing the same national security risk because they do not exceed the capability level Mythos has reached, and that any future model crossing that threshold would need to go through the government before release.
The episode also escalates a months-long standoff between Anthropic and the Trump administration, which earlier this year designated the company a “supply chain risk” for Pentagon contractors after Anthropic declined to accept contract terms allowing its models to be used for “all lawful purposes.” Anthropic cited concerns over autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance and is contesting that designation in court.
An escalating standoff
On Friday, Anthropic said in a blog post that US national security authorities had not identified specific concerns, but that the company understood the government believed it had become aware of a method of bypassing, or jailbreaking, Fable 5.
However, over the weekend, White House AI adviser David Sacks offered his own account of the standoff. In a post on X, Sacks said a highly credible, trusted partner of both Anthropic and the government had identified a jailbreak in Fable 5’s guardrails and that the administration asked Amodei to fix the issue or withdraw the model. According to Sacks, Amodei refused, leading the administration to issue the export control reluctantly. Sacks added that the administration hopes Anthropic will remediate the issue so that Fable can return to general release as soon as possible, and pushed back on suggestions that the move was connected to the earlier Pentagon dispute.
Sacks previously served as the administration’s AI and crypto czar and has repeatedly clashed with Anthropic, accusing the company of regulatory capture tactics rooted in what he has called fear-mongering about AI risk.
Senior White House officials also told Politico that the export controls were a last resort after officials spent hours asking Anthropic to work with them. The publication also reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Amodei directly during one call that he was making a bad decision.
‘A wake-up call’ for Europe
The fallout of the decision has reverberated beyond Washington, sparking reactions from politicians around the world. In Europe, the shutdown has reignited calls for what officials describe as sovereign AI, the idea that countries should control the AI models, computing infrastructure, and data that underpin critical technology, rather than depending on systems that can be restricted or withdrawn by foreign governments.
Former French prime minister Édouard Philippe said the episode showed that AI is now critical infrastructure as essential as electricity or the internet, and that infrastructure controlled by others is infrastructure that others can unplug. Bruno Retailleau, a French 2027 presidential candidate, said the move should serve as a “wake-up call,” arguing that a nation that depends on others for its technology is a nation that can be unplugged overnight.
In the UK, MP Al Carns said British hospitals, companies, and researchers had been using Fable 5 before it was switched off, framing the episode as part of a broader pattern of lost technological leadership. Tom Tugendhat, a former UK security minister and MP, similarly argued that the incident shows sovereignty is now more about “code than cannons,” and criticized the UK’s regulatory approach for prioritizing safety over building competitive AI capacity.
For many politicians, the ban made clear how dependent European governments and companies have become on a small number of U.S. AI labs, and how quickly that dependence can become a political liability when access is disrupted, even temporarily.

Voters in Switzerland have cast their final ballots on Sunday on an initiative championed by the top right-wing party to cap the rich Alpine country’s population at 10 million. Early results showed Swiss voters were leaning against it.
The populist Swiss People’s Party, which has the most seats in parliament, has stirred up and fostered anti-migration sentiment over the years, notably about an influx of workers from the neighboring European Union.
Some have dubbed the proposal a “Swiss Brexit” because it could jeopardize Switzerland’s deep ties to the European Union anchored by deals that foster economic growth, cultural ties and cross-border travel, among other things. Switzerland is not one of the EU’s 27 member states, but it is all but surrounded by four of them
Recent polling from the gfs.bern agency suggested that it could be a close contest.
Preliminary results shared by the federal government showed that nearly 53% of voters rejected the proposal, with nationwide turnout exceeding 57%. Results were still pending from many of Switzerland’s 26 cantons.
The number of people living in Switzerland has soared by nearly one-quarter over the last generation, and foreigners today make up nearly one-third of the population.
Critics say the boom in migration has brought foreign labor and skills to sectors such as healthcare, finance, pharmaceuticals, and technology.
The right-wing party put forward the “sustainability initiative” measure, saying Swiss infrastructure, housing, social programs, natural resources and way of life have been strained by the spike in demographic growth.
The federal government, Parliament and EconomieSuisse, a major business association, oppose the idea.
In Geneva, Switzerland’s second-largest city and a hub of U.N. institutions and humanitarian groups, early results showed about two-thirds of voters in the region opposed the measure.
Geneva will be hosting the G7 economic summit this week, welcoming U.S. President Trump among other world leaders.
Maria Lalu, a former diplomatic mission worker from the Philippines who arrived in Switzerland in the early 1980s, said she supported the proposal. “I have nothing against immigration. I also am a stranger,” she said after casting her vote, adding that she wants immigration to be more orderly.
Schoolteacher Natascha Robert said she voted against the bid, expressing concern that approval could hurt Switzerland’s relationship with the EU. She also said Switzerland’s growing diversity is an asset.
“I think people always have something to bring us,” she said outside a polling station in the central Paquis neighborhood, emphasizing that she was born in Switzerland to two Swiss parents. “Does that mean that we have more foreigners, I feel less Swiss? Really, not.”
Swiss democracy gives voters a direct say in policymaking through referendums typically held four times a year. Most ballots are cast through the mail, and in-person voting ends at noon local time on Sunday.
A “yes” vote would require the Swiss government to take action to cap the population by 2050.
If the population reaches 9.5 million before then, the government would be forced to restrict asylum, family reunification and residency permits, and may have to scrap Switzerland’s EU deal on the free movement of people.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has reported that Switzerland had a foreign-born population of 32% as of 2024, behind only Luxembourg and Australia among the group’s 38 member countries.
International migration has long been a sensitive issue in Europe, as nations grapple with an aging population and increasing anti-foreigner sentiment. While that sentiment in other European countries centers on migrants from the developing world, most foreigners in Switzerland are Europeans.
Since Switzerland and the EU eased restrictions on citizens living and working across their borders in 2002, the Swiss population has grown by 23%, to 9.1 million as of the end of last year. Economic output has also increased, up 24% over the same period, government data show.
Swiss voters have repeatedly tackled the immigration issue over the last half-century. Only one such referendum — “Against mass immigration” in 2014 — narrowly passed, after campaigners stoked fears about overpopulation and rising numbers of Muslims in the country.
While many countries have limits on immigration, none has ever voted to limit its population, Swiss experts say.

Marvita Davis, 70, was a teenager in Harlem the last time the New York Knicks won a championship, in 1973.
“I was like, Oh, I like this game. I can get into this game,” recalled Davis, who went on to play basketball at Northeastern University.
She maintained her love of hoops – even though she had knee and hip replacements and can no longer play – and her love of the Knicks, despite their more than a half-century of futility. “I will support all my hometown teams, regardless of how bad they are,” said Davis, a retired computer programmer.
On Saturday night, that longstanding fanhood paid off when the Knicks finally won an NBA title again by defeating the San Antonio Spurs in five games.
Davis watched as the game was projected onto a screen on the front lawn of her apartment building with other residents in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. Others watched from bars in the East Village and fire escapes in the West Village and erupted as the clock hit zero.
“It’s euphoria,” Davis said.
That was the feeling throughout all five boroughs. Car horns, fireworks, “Let’s go Knicks” chants and Jay-Z’s Empire State Of Mind and Frank Sinatra’s Theme From New York, New York filled the streets, subways and bars until well after midnight. (Some shouted an expletive directed at Spurs star Victor Wembanyama too.)
“The city is alive, man, like never before,” said Nick Pineda, a 47-year Bronx resident who works in information technology and watched the game at Habana Outpost, a Brooklyn restaurant that also projected the game outdoors.
Firefighters drove through the city holding a Knicks blanket. Even bus drivers got some love from residents.
“B-52! B-52! B-52!” fans who filled sidewalks in Brooklyn chanted as a bus rolled past.
Predictably, as after most championships – even ones less than a half-century in the making – some fans climbed atop traffic lights and a police car.
Rashid Taylor, a 51-year-old Brooklyn native, said Jalen Brunson was the driver that guided them to the victory.
“They got the champion, fearless leader just taking them through all the fire,” Taylor said of Brunson, who scored 45 points in the Game 5 win. “This team is just heart and soul and passion and not backing down.”
There is only more celebration ahead. Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a ticker tape parade on 18 June, and said city hall will present the team the keys to the city – a symbolic gesture to recognize New York’s notable citizens.