The UK should enforce an Australian-style social media ban to prevent teenagers from being radicalised online, the Government’s independent terrorism watchdog has suggested.
Jonathan Hall KC warned the internet had become a ‘portal to horrific acts of violence’, and that interacting with AI such as extremist chatbots could lead young misfits ‘down the dial of death’.
He said Britain could ‘take back control’ from the tech giants through new policy choices, pointing to the ban that came into effect in Australia last month as an example of ‘improving’ legislation.
The measure is aimed at stopping children under 16 from using social media sites like TikTok, X and Instagram, and could see companies fined up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (£25.6 million) for non-compliance.
Some 200,000 TikTok accounts were deactivated within the first day of the ban alone, the Australian government last month said.
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Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Hall said Britain could ‘take back control’ from the tech giants through new policy choices.
He praised Australia, saying the move was an example of ‘improving’ legislation.
Critics have voiced privacy concerns and questioned whether the ban can be effectively enforced.
But the Australian government said it’s needed to protect young people from online harms.
Mr Hall said the ban was ‘partial and circumventable’ but ‘has echoes of other improving social legislation such as compulsory seat belts and the smoking ban in pubs’.
Online networks are encouraging some children to commit acts of violence against their peers, the senior lawyer, who is the UK’s independent reviewer of terror legislation, said.
He cited Southport killer Axel Rudakubana, who was 17 when he stabbed three young girls to death, and 19-year-old Nicholas Prosper, who murdered his mother and two siblings and was on his way to carry out a school shooting when he was stopped by police.
Both killers had looked at extreme and violent material online before carrying out the attacks – though neither case was deemed to fall strictly within the definition of terrorism.
Hall said: ‘Terrorist chatbots or avatars of celebrated mass killers, always present and eager to please, are precisely the wrong companions for disturbed teenagers like Axel Rudakubana and Nicholas Prosper.
‘It is entirely foreseeable that chatbots will stimulate some misfits even further down the dial of death.’
He added: ‘Taking children away from their devices is a whole lot easier than parents monitoring their content, laughably suggested by the tech companies as an alternative to regulation.’
It comes after the Metropolitan Police reported a rise in Prevent scheme referrals in London in November, urging parents to be ‘vigilant’ about their children’s online activity.
The force warned parents that with ‘more and more children having access to the internet through their phones, there is an increased risk they may be exposed to dangerous and harmful material that could lead them down the path towards radicalisation’ and committing acts of terrorism.
Home Office figures revealed a 38% increase in referrals from April 2024 to March 2025 in London, with the majority of those cases involving under-18s.
Detective superintendent Jane Corrigan, the Met’s London Prevent co-ordinator, told Metro: ‘Say you had a child who was autistic, who was spending a lot of time online, who’d become very withdrawn from the house, who was very angry and refusing to go to school, who had concerns around their mental health, maybe suicidal ideation, and started sounding like they were speaking like somebody else.
‘They are classic signs that that individual is probably being groomed or radicalised towards terrorism.
‘We know there are young people who are spending a lot of time in their bedrooms, we have parents who don’t feel confident to be able to talk to their children about what they’re doing online.
‘And we’ve seen online spaces are almost certainly an accelerant.’
Last month, a Centre for Social Justice study suggested more than 800,000 British children under the age of five are already active on one or more social media site.
Former education minister Lord Nash said that finding was ‘deeply alarming’.
He added: ‘We need a major public health campaign so parents better understand the damage being done, and legislation that raises the age limit for social media to 16 whilst holding tech giants to account when they fail to keep children off their platforms.’
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