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 guide covers three things. What your child can still use. Why a permission slip will not help. What an app looks like when it is built to be lawful for children from the start, 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 an attempt to make an unsafe place safe. Towards places that were built to be safe for children from the start.
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 writes about this on Sense Future. He argues that the ban names the right problem. He also argues that this way of building is what a child-safe network was always meant to be. You can read it here: The Closed Garden.
One question follows from all of this. A school or a scout group has no software budget. How can it have an app of its own?
It can because it does not pay for the whole thing. Every organisation we build for uses one shared foundation. Age checks, parent control, approved contacts and the record of who saw what are already in that foundation. Each school or club only pays for the part that is its own.
That is also why the safety rules are the same everywhere. They live in the foundation, and not in each app. One app cannot get them wrong on its own.
We explain how a whole sector shares one foundation in bespoke software for a whole sector. We set out what such a system costs in what does it cost to own and run your own systems.
This is the single most useful thing a parent can do. Some places are already in the life of your child. The school, after-school club, music school, sports club, scouts or guides group, and summer camp. Those are the organisations 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. The organisation pays once for the build, and then owns it. Every family can then stay in touch with school and club life, with no 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 control the accounts of your children, as UK and Australian law requires. Their approved contacts. What other people can see them do. The hours they can use the app. All from one place. A school or club of your child may build an app with us later. Your account is already there, and it covers that app 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. |
An app that cannot answer these clearly is probably the kind of platform the ban is written for. A child mode was added on top.
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. A school or club of your child builds an app with us. You then also get an account, and you use it to control how your child uses 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.