Parents of growing children are facing up to a new threat to family harmony in the face of new social media restrictions announced in June, with a fear that they will cause further upset and disruption in households already trying to manage delicate moods and growing pains.
Add parental separation into that scenario and it adds another challenge. Each parent will now need to consider how to manage the new restrictions whilst also maintaining a stable homelife for their children.
UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer announced in June that the Government would be introducing a social media ban for under-16s, which would restrict access to platforms popular with young teenagers, such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, as well as other platforms available to use by under-16s, such as YouTube, Facebook and X. The ban will come into force in spring 2027 with the aim of protecting the safety, happiness and wellbeing of young children.
While the ban has significant merits in that sense, it does present challenges for parents in how these restrictions will be managed, and for separated parents, the complexity is magnified by having to manage this between two households already dealing with significant disruption and emotional turmoil.
What are the challenges of social media restrictions for separated families?
Managing screentime for young people is already a very challenging aspect of being a parent, and usually centres around prioritising other things above smartphone use, such as homework, hobbies, household chores or family commitments. However, the new social media restrictions specifically focus attention on the damage smartphone use can do to safety and mental wellbeing.
It will be extremely difficult for some parents to enforce these restrictions and to police social media use. They need to help their children understand the dangers of social media and the benefits of restricting access to certain platforms, particularly when this is an important social outlet for some children, representing safe and positive engagement for them.
The new restrictions also have the potential to add a new dimension to disputes when it comes to separated families and how child arrangements are managed. It is already common for parents to disagree on issues such as screentime and what platforms children should have access to. In terms of online safety, there is a growing sense that disagreements over digital access will be considered a child welfare issue in light of the new restrictions, rather than simply a dispute over the different ways separated parents choose to manage smartphone use.
This therefore adds a new layer of complexity to how family disputes could be discussed in court. In other words, a fair and open-minded parent may previously have allowed unlimited smartphone use to give their children some freedom, but will now come under closer scrutiny and could be accused of compromising the online safety of their child by enabling unrestricted access.
How separated families could be affected by the social media ban
In addition to a parent allowing unrestricted access coming under closer examination in family courts, other challenges for separated parents include:
- Consistency – It is possible that one parent strictly enforces the social media ban, while the other is more lenient. This can cause disputes between the parents and could be a means through which one parent could be accused of undermining authority, and trying to turn a child against the other parent.
- Co-parent contact – Some co-parents rely on social media apps for day-to-day contact with their children and for making important access arrangements. There will still be approved messaging apps available for this kind of contact, but it is another element which causes disruption and will need monitoring.
- Monitoring online activity – Inevitably there will be disputes about general online activity, given there is plenty of potentially harmful online content available outside of social media apps. It is possible that child arrangement discussions will include conversations about wider digital controls as a result of the new restrictions, which will involve how the child operates online first and foremost, but could also include how separated parents operate online, such as boundaries relating to posting photos of children on holiday, or during legitimate access visits.
- More complexity to child arrangement orders (CAOs) – It is likely that the new restrictions will lead to courts having to include more specific agreements in CAOs, with clear rules and boundaries on smartphone use which would apply in both households. This should allow for the different parenting styles while still maintaining compliance with the new social media rules.
The new restrictions are not expected to come into force until spring 2027, but there is a lot of work to do in the meantime in terms of the technical aspects of how such a ban can be enforced by the digital platforms. It is possible the key developments in this area will assist parents in implementing robust restrictions on social media use, but the fact remains that the ban is another source of conflict that separating families will have to consider and manage.
At Consilia Legal we have specialist family solicitors who are able to advise on how parenting plans are developed and what needs to be included in discussions. We can advise on these new social media restrictions and how they might impact on the life of co-parents, so contact our team today if this could affect you.