If one home allows TikTok and the other does not, March 2027 is about to settle that argument for you.
Last week the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, confirmed that the ban on social media accounts for under-16s will come into force in March 2027. Platforms including TikTok, Instagram and YouTube will no longer be allowed to offer accounts to children under 16, and the duty to enforce that will sit with the technology companies rather than with parents. For most families this is a headline about online safety. For separated parents it is something more useful: a date in the diary that lifts one of the most wearing arguments in co-parenting off your shoulders.
We hear that argument often in the mediation room, and it almost never really starts out being about an app. One parent has set a firm rule: no account yet, phones downstairs by nine, no group chats with people the family does not know. The other parent, sometimes out of a different view and sometimes because a weekend simply goes more smoothly without a battle, is more relaxed. The child, who is nobody’s fool, works out very quickly which house to ask in. And the parent holding the line ends up cast as the strict one, the boring one, the bad cop.
That pattern does real damage, though not mainly to the rule itself. What it wears away is a child’s sense that their two homes are still run by adults who can be a team about the things that matter.
What the ban actually changes, and what it does not
From March 2027 the starting point stops being a matter of opinion in your household and becomes a matter of law in everybody’s. That is a genuine relief for the parent who has been the only one saying no. There will be a floor, it will be the same floor in both homes, and neither of you will have put it there.
It is worth being clear about what the ban does not do, because overstating it will only create a fresh argument later. It covers access to social media accounts. It does not limit how long a child spends on a phone, a tablet or a games console, and it does not cover gaming chat or messaging between friends. If screen time rather than social media is the real friction in your family, March 2027 will not solve it. That part is still yours to agree.
Why the next eighteen months matter more than the deadline
Eighteen months sounds like plenty of time, and that is exactly why it tends to get wasted. Two groups of children will feel the change least: those who turn 16 before the ban lands, and those who already have accounts. In both cases the question of what is allowed comes back to the two of you.
There is also a quieter reason to use this window. Agreeing something while it is still hypothetical is far easier than agreeing it in the middle of a row about a specific photograph or group chat. Right now the ban is simply a news story, and nobody is defending a decision they have already made. That is the best possible moment to have the conversation.
Bringing it into mediation
Setting co-parenting social media rules is precisely the sort of question mediation handles well, because it is practical, it is forward looking, and it does not need anybody to be found at fault. It is also an issue courts handle poorly, because the answer has to be something two parents will keep to on an ordinary Tuesday evening.
In a session we would usually work through a short list together:
- the age at which an account is allowed, and which platforms you are both comfortable with
- where phones and tablets spend the night, in both houses
- what each of you will do when a rule is broken, so your child hears the same answer whichever door they walk through
- how and when you will tell each other about something worrying you have seen online
- gaming, group chats and messaging, which the ban does not cover and which often matter more day to day
- when you will revisit it, because a child of eleven and a child of fourteen are not the same child
None of that needs to be a long document. The parents who manage this best tend to leave with half a page they can both remember, not a policy. What matters is that it was agreed rather than imposed, because an agreement survives a difficult week in a way an instruction never does.
Courts are beginning to look at screens too
Anita Hennessey, a family law partner at HCR Law, made a point about the ban that is worth separated parents noting: courts may increasingly treat excessive screen time as part of the wider welfare picture, particularly where it is clearly affecting a child’s sleep, their schoolwork, their activities or their relationships. That is not a reason for alarm, nor a reason to start building a case against the other parent.
It is a reason to sort it out yourselves. An arrangement the two of you have reached, written down and stuck to is worth a great deal more to your child than a finding about who was too permissive. It is also considerably quicker and cheaper than finding out what a court makes of your household rules. If you would like a sense of what mediation involves and what it costs, our prices are set out plainly.
Talking to your children about it
Children tend to hear a ban as something being taken away from them, and if it arrives as a rule from the stricter parent it will feel like a punishment with a face on it. It helps enormously if they hear about it from both of you, in roughly the same words, well before March 2027 rather than on the day their account stops working. You do not have to pretend to be pleased about it. You only have to be consistent.
Older children in particular want to understand why their parents’ separation keeps producing different answers to simple questions. We keep a page written for them rather than for their parents, which some families find a gentler way in: information for young people of separated parents.
A calmer way to use the next eighteen months
The under-16 ban is a rare piece of good news for separated parents. It takes an argument running in thousands of households and gives both sides the same answer, without either parent having to concede anything. The families who get the most out of it will treat March 2027 as a prompt rather than a deadline, and use the time between now and then to agree the things the ban leaves untouched.
If the conversation keeps going round in circles, or has never quite been possible at all, that is usually a sign it needs a third person in the room rather than more goodwill. You can read about how we work on our mediation page, or get in touch and we will talk you through it with no obligation.
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