Last week, the UK government banned social media for under-16s starting next year, modeling its restrictions on those set by the Australian government in December. The UK social media ban will block the age group from accessing platforms where the “sole and significant purpose” is to facilitate social interaction. That includes Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Twitch, likely alongside other platforms such as dating apps and Bluesky. Pinterest, YouTube Kids, and messenger apps like WhatsApp are not included in the ban. Three days later after the UK made this announcement, the UAE followed suit and became the first Arab country to introduce a ban on social media use for under-15s.
It’s the latest sign that the anti-social media movement is reaching a tipping point, as the push to limit children’s exposure to addictive algorithms and other potential online harms extends beyond activist interests into the mainstream. But for brands that rely on these platforms to reach younger consumers and build loyalty for when they have their own discretionary spend, experts say the bans will accelerate a fragmentation in the Gen Alpha marketing playbook that was already underway.
Culture becomes conversational again
Early data from Australia shows that six months into its social media ban, the overall time that young teens spend online hasn’t changed. Instead, their time budget is being allocated to different online spaces that are unaffected by the new restrictions. According to market researcher GWI, Tumblr use among under-16s in Australia is up 241% year-on-year; Pinterest is up 155%; Zoom is up 116%; and Discord is up 39%.
Messaging platforms have also become more central. GWI also found that the share of young Australians who describe WhatsApp as their favorite social platform has risen fivefold from 4% to 20% since the ban came into force in December, while Facebook Messenger has risen from 6% to 21%. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have both overtaken Snapchat, which was the most-used platform among this cohort (57.3%) in 2025, before it was banned in December. GWI says it no longer tracks Snapchat usage after the ban.
“The UK ban is less likely to see young consumers log off, and more likely to see a reshuffle of where they hang out online,” says Chris Beer, a senior data journalist at GWI. “Messaging, group chats, video calls, and spaces left unaffected will become more important social infrastructure if mainstream social feeds are harder to access.”
As ever, teenagers are adept at finding ways to move around the limits set for them. Three months into the restrictions in Australia, more than two-thirds of under-16s who had accounts prior to the ban were still using social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, according to separate research by the UK’s Molly Rose Foundation.
“I think anyone who thinks a 14-year-old who really wants to use TikTok is going to calmly accept a blocked login screen probably hasn’t met many 14-year-olds,” says Navarra, who predicts we’ll see “all the usual workarounds”, including fake birthdays, parent accounts, older siblings, shared devices, and VPNs. Parental gatekeeping will play a large part in the ban’s implementation within individual households, and Navarra predicts that determined teens will migrate to whichever platform feels the easiest to access.
“I think the more interesting question is whether getting around the bans becomes a niche thing or just another normal bit of teen internet behavior, like knowing which teacher doesn’t check homework properly,” he says. Much of this will depend on how tough enforcement is in the UK and the UAE. The UK has said enforcement will be based primarily on mandatory age-verification and age-assurance systems, with responsibility placed on social media platforms rather than individual users. The details are still being finalized, but ministers have indicated that enforcement could involve technologies such as facial age-estimation tools (already used by Meta, which introduced AI-powered visual recognition of under-13s last month in response to a US lawsuit against its addictive design), government ID checks, or credit card and other age verification services. But entrusting enforcement to platforms leaves the rigor and effectiveness of verification to them, which means these are likely to vary, and Navarra predicts teens will test product friction on each platform, finding workarounds accordingly.
Beer also points out that teenagers’ own views are more nuanced — they’re not necessarily resisting the bans as much as is often assumed. GWI’s research also found that 46% of Australian 13 to 15-year-olds believe the ban is a good thing, 30% think it’s bad, and 19% don’t mind either way.
Regardless of whether young consumers can access content directly or watch it over their parents’ and siblings’ shoulders, experts say Gen Alpha will continue to discuss it in their private chats on unrestricted platforms. This will likely reinforce a trend already underway: reshares will become conversational, and paradoxically, more social.
Gaming continues to rise
Another reason the impact of the social media bans is likely overstated is that Gen Alpha was already socializing more within gaming ecosystems than traditional social media platforms.
Around 51% of Gen Alphas identify as digital gamers, while only 22% use traditional social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snap, and TikTok, according to Emarketer. Of those who use social media, more engage with TikTok (17.2%) than with the other platforms.
This chimes with separate data from several other market research agencies and trend analysts. According to gaming insights platform Geeiq, ahead of the bans being enforced in the UK, Roblox is the single biggest destination for Gen Z attention, at 180 minutes a day, ahead of TikTok at 107 minutes. Fortnite and Minecraft also sit in the top six. “The assumption is that under-16s live on social media, but they’ve already moved,” says Geeiq’s CEO Charles Hambro.
Although the UK is going a step further than Australia by prohibiting strangers from making contact with under-16s on all social platforms and also online games, gaming, or gaming-adjacent platforms like Roblox and Discord are otherwise not included in the blanket ban. What’s more, gaming experts say that for most online games, the model is already shifting away from playing with strangers on the main platforms.
“The reason Gen Z and Gen Alpha treat these platforms as social networks isn’t anonymous matchmaking, it’s that they go there to hang out with friends they already know,” says Hambro. “The restriction targets communication between strangers and minors, not gameplay itself, so a game of Fortnite or a Roblox experience still works exactly as designed. What changed is the chat layer, and that’s the part platforms are already rebuilding — these platforms are engineering toward friend-based, age-appropriate interaction, and away from open voice chat with anyone.”
Hambro points out that gaming platforms — cognisant of their younger user base — have already begun introducing their own age-verification measures. Roblox rolled out mandatory age verification globally in January 2026, using facial age estimation, and now restricts who younger users can talk to. Under-16s need parental consent for direct chat, users are grouped into age brackets and largely kept to their own, and adults are blocked from messaging minors unless they’re mutually confirmed connections. Fortnite has long had parental controls over voice and text chat. “In some respects, these platforms are already self-regulating on exactly the safety concerns the government is targeting, ahead of legislation that won’t bite until 2027,” Hambro says. “The games survive, but the open-mic-with-strangers era is what fades.”
Alo Yoga’s Alo Sanctuary activation within Roblox has gained 130 million visits to date, per Geeiq’s count.
Luxury and sportswear brands have increasingly been building deep in-game integrations within platforms like Roblox, Fortnite, and The Sims to build brand loyalty among Gen Z and Alpha. According to Geeiq’s most recent count, there are currently 218 live fashion brand-owned experiences active in virtual worlds. Brands like Coach say gaming platforms are now a part of every brand campaign, launch, and strategy, and they’re investing deeper in in-game activations to reach younger consumers where they’re spending the most time online. Activations function as persistent, always-on destinations within these virtual worlds, rather than fleeting ad spots on social media that capture users’ short-term attention. This requires a whole different playbook that’s centered around young users’ sense of active co-creation and self-expression within these games — for many younger Gen Z players and older Gen Alphas, donning a branded skin within Roblox already carries more cultural weight than donning physical branded garments for a mirror selfie to post on Snapchat or Instagram online.
“This is our way to connect with Gen Z emotionally online,” Coach’s SVP of global visual experience Giovanni Zaccariello recently told Vogue Business. “But we’re not just partnering with any game for the sake of being into gaming. We’ve really been narrowing down on games that allow for self-expression.” Hambro says that six months into 2026, Coach, Omega, and Adidas have all launched new brand experiences within online games, with Adidas activating repeatedly. Alo Yoga’s Alo Sanctuary activation within Roblox has gained 130 million visits to date, per Geeiq’s count.
“The most likely outcome is that all the bans simply accelerate a migration that’s been underway since lockdown, pushing younger users further into gaming and virtual worlds,” Hambro says.
What does this mean for brands?
Experts say Gen Alpha’s accelerated shift towards alternative platforms means marketers must rewrite their engagement signals for the next online era. Or as Navarra puts it, “The consumer doesn’t disappear, but the dashboard probably does for brands.” He’s already advising brands that Gen Alpha is likely not actively commenting or liking brand posts, or even following brands’ own social profiles at all. Instead, they’re likely absorbing them indirectly (via older family members’ phones) and discussing them within their DMs and private chats.
“For this age group, brand engagement often happens without the brand ever seeing it. So the engagement is the screenshot, is the group chat, it’s the birthday list, it’s the school corridor conversation,” Navarra says. Experts say brands that have been investing in strong offline worlds, retail presence, and pop-up experiences, and entertainment IP will be less affected by the bans than those that have been relying on online virality for cultural reach, and TikTok as a youth culture radar. Going forward, they advise brands to broaden their youth relevance strategy, prioritizing these indirect marketing strategies even more.
“Don’t target the child or the teen, understand the culture that sits around them, and think about how to become part of their taste world without needing to directly target them,” Navarra says. This means thinking about how to reach Gen Alpha through their peers, parents, and older siblings, via more emotionally resonant campaigns that are entertaining enough to be talked about off-platform, rather than short-form content that is passively consumed. Experiences, events, and other offline brand worlds are also likely to endure as memories that these younger consumers can talk about long after the event itself.
In the short term, this means reach will be harder to measure through existing marketing dashboards, but in the longer term, it could foster stronger brand loyalty among the next generation of luxury consumers.
“The smartest brands probably won’t chase teens around the internet; they’ll build things teens want to talk about. That’s much harder than buying ads, but it’s also more durable,” Navarra says.
“I don’t think the bans will stop young people shaping culture, but it will change where the culture is made — away from the public feed, and into private chats, gaming worlds, and family purchasing decisions via more thoughtful, offline experiences.”
