New social media curfews and crackdown on addictive features to bette…

UK government mandates default overnight curfews (midnight-6am) and automatic disabling of addictive features (autoplay, infinite scroll) for 16-17 year-olds on social media platforms, with regulations to be laid before Parliament by end of 2026 and enforced spring 2027. Separate measures include mandatory breaks for under-18s on AI chatbots and potential bans on mental health chatbots deemed dangerous. If you build social media or AI products for European markets, you now have eight months to ship mandatory curfews and feature kills for 16-17 year-olds as UK default settings—and this becomes the template for every other regulator watching. The move from opt-in to opt-out protection means your product roadmap just got a non-negotiable dependency on age verification and toggle architecture.