If you are a parent in the UK or Australia, the rules just changed under your feet. Under-16s are being banned from social media. This is a clear guide to what your child can still use, why a permission slip will not help, and the kind of app that is built to be lawful for children from the ground up, with you in control.
Australia banned under-16s from social media in December 2025. On 15 June 2026, the UK confirmed it will do the same, with the law expected in force by Spring 2027. Both target the open platforms most parents worry about: TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, X, YouTube and the like.
There is one detail that surprises most parents, so it is worth stating plainly.
That feels limiting. In practice it points you somewhere better: away from trying to make an unsafe place safe, and toward places that were built to be safe for children in the first place.
The bans are narrower than the headlines suggest. They are aimed at the open, public, stranger-facing network. They deliberately leave the everyday digital life of a child alone. Under the rules, your child can still:
So the lawful space for a child is not "no technology". It is communication inside known, closed, supervised circles: the people you approve, the school they attend, the clubs they belong to. The thing that is gone is the open feed full of strangers. For most parents, that is exactly the trade they wanted.
Most apps were built for open interaction, then had child-safety settings bolted on. A new kind is built the other way around, with the safe-for-children experience as the default. engage.re is one such platform, and the laws describe its design almost exactly.
The founder of the platform, writing on Sense Future, makes the wider argument that the ban is the right diagnosis and that this architecture is what a child-safe network was always supposed to be. You can read it here: The Closed Garden.
This is the single most useful thing a parent can do. The places already in your child's life, their school, after-school club, music school, sports club, scouts or guides group, and summer camp, are exactly the institutions the law protects. Each of them can have a bespoke app built that your child can lawfully use: closed, supervised, and governed by you.
ESRE Media builds these apps on the engage.re graph. If you would like your child to have a genuinely safe digital space, encourage the institutions around them to build their app with us. It costs the institution a one-off build, it belongs to them, and it gives every family a way to stay connected to school and club life without an open social network.
engage.re is open by waiting list while it is built out for this moment. You can register your interest now. An account lets you manage your children's accounts in line with UK and Australian law: their approved contacts, their visible activity, and their access hours, all from one place. And if a school or club your child belongs to later builds an app with us, your account is already there to manage that relationship too.
If you are weighing up an app for your child, the questions that matter are simple.
| Ask | A safe answer looks like |
|---|---|
| Can a stranger contact my child? | No. Contact is limited to people the parent has approved. |
| Is there an open public feed? | No. There is no stranger feed for a child to scroll. |
| Who controls the account? | The parent, who can see everything and freeze it. Not the school, not the app. |
| Can my child be reached by an AI chatbot? | Only a vetted, educational AI the parent has approved, never an open one. |
| Does it follow my country's law automatically? | Yes, based on the child's verified age and country. |
If an app cannot answer these clearly, it is probably the kind of platform the ban is aimed at, with a child mode painted on.
Not the open platforms named in the ban. They can still message known friends and family, use learning resources, and take part in closed apps run by their school, club or camp. The lawful space is known, supervised circles, not an open public network.
In the UK and Australia, no. There is no parental-consent exemption. The duty is on the platform to keep under-16s off. The better route is a platform built to be lawful for children, with you in control.
Register on the waiting list. When a school or club your child belongs to builds an app with us, you also receive an account to manage your child's relationship with that app.
No. Australia's ban is already in force and the same approach applies. The platform resolves the right rules from your child's verified age and country.