Tech giants tell MPs social media age limits should not be raised

Meta and Google have said the minimum age UK children can access social media should not be raised amid debate over whether platforms should be banned for under-16s because of harmful content and addictive algorithms.

Officials from TikTok and X said they remained “neutral” on the issue but representatives from Facebook owner Meta and YouTube owner Google said the age limit should not be raised, in response to questions from the cross-party Science, Innovation and Technology committee on Tuesday.

Those four platforms are among 10 included in Australia’s ban on social media for under-16s, which also includes Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, Reddit, Kick and Twitch.

The UK Government is consulting on whether to introduce a similar ban for under 16-year-olds, which is due to conclude on May 26. The current minimum age for access for most social media platforms in the UK is 13, with some offering restricted features until users reach 18.

Rebecca Stimson, UK public policy director at Meta, told the committee a ban “doesn’t solve the problems that the Government is trying to solve”.

Users under the age of 18 had a “much more restricted experience”, she said, adding: “So we’re completely with the intention of ensuring that young people have age-appropriate experiences and giving their parents a high degree of control.

“I think simply moving the age … is not going to, we need to have a broader conversation, which is, I think, what the Government’s trying to do in the consultation about how best to make that effective and implement it at scale.”

Zoe Darme, director for trust, knowledge and information products at Google, said she would not support a ban on under-16s, claiming that YouTube was not a social media platform.

“YouTube is a video library, a video-sharing platform. It lacks many of the social features that traditional social media companies have produced,” she said.

Wifredo Fernandez, director of global government affairs at X, said: “We are not trying to build a business around kids.”

He added that globally, 1% of the platform’s user base is under the age of 18 and over 13 and therefore X is “neutral” on the issue.

“We don’t have a major dog in this fight,” he added.

Alistair Law, TikTok’s director of public policy for Northern Europe, said TikTok is also “neutral”, despite having a significant youth audience.

“If you’re 15, you should have a very different experience online to if you are 25 and that’s why we have 50 pre-set safety features for our under-16 accounts,” he said.

For example, users under 16 do not have access to direct messages, he added.

When asked about what TikTok gains from having younger users, Mr Law replied: “The Government is talking about dropping the voting age to 16, and so platforms like TikTok are ways to be able to view the world and engage with the world.”

Committee members also accused social media officials of “failing at protecting children” against harmful content.

It comes after the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) identified 8,029 AI-made images and videos of realistic child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in 2025.

The IWF said 65% of the 3,443 videos were classified as category A, the term for the most severe material under UK law.

Labour MP Emily Darlington told the social media representatives: “Quite clearly, your policies currently are failing.”

Referring to the chief executives of X (Elon Musk), Meta (Mark Zuckerberg) and TikTok (Shou Zi Chew), Conservative MP Kit Malthouse called on the companies “to diffuse” their political influence to make their platforms “more democratic”.

Mr Malthouse told the representatives of X, Meta and TikTok: “The problem we’ve got is that the prejudice, judgment call, or whatever you like, of these three people, is basically appearing in every home every day, all the time.”

It came after Mr Fernandez, of X, told the committee Mr Musk’s platform is “politically agnostic in our operation and our mission and in our research”.

Asked if X has a political leaning, Mr Fernandez said: “We don’t have a political perspective as a platform.”