Online safety advocates have called on the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to prevent under-16s from using social media platforms that fail to meet tough safety requirements, rather than imposing a sweeping Australia-style prohibition.

The NSPCC, Molly Rose Foundation, and Smartphone Free Childhood argued that tech companies should be barred from exposing teenagers to “high-risk” features, including infinite scrolling, disappearing messages, and push notifications, according to The Guardian.

“We are asking you to act now to require tech platforms to meet strict safety standards to continue to offer their services to under-16s,” they wrote in a letter to the prime minister.

“We believe a binary debate between banning children from social media or not can oversimplify what is a complex issue. Instead, platforms’ continued ability to offer accounts and services to children should be made conditional on their ability to demonstrate that they are safe.”

In Australia, access to platforms such as Instagram and TikTok is restricted for under-16s under rules set by the eSafety Commissioner.

Age limits apply to services that enable interaction between two or more users and allow users to post content.

By contrast, UK campaigners are advocating a model that would grant or deny access based on whether a platform meets defined safety standards.

Campaigners say social media apps should be approved before they are made available to under-16s, with any new features also subjected to safety assessments prior to launch. The UK’s regulatory regime, the Online Safety Act, is enforced by the communications watchdog Ofcom.

The letter aims to align campaign groups on the issue of an under-16 ban.

The Molly Rose Foundation and the NSPCC have stopped short of endorsing a blanket age restriction, warning it could create a safety “cliff edge” for teenagers.

Meanwhile, Smartphone Free Childhood has called for under-16s to be barred from social media, mirroring its push for comparable limits on smartphone access.

“What’s so significant about this moment is that organisations across civil society are aligning around a simple principle: access to our children should be treated as a privilege that must be earned, not an automatic right,” said Joe Ryrie, the director of Smartphone Free Childhood.