UK PM attacks endless scrolling

Keir Starmer said social platforms should stop “never-ending” scrolling features that keep children watching videos for hours, pushing feed design into Britain’s online-safety debate. (reuters.com) The British prime minister made the remarks on April 13, 2026, as his government faced pressure to show how the United Kingdom’s online-safety rules will protect children beyond policing illegal posts. Reuters reported that Starmer singled out autoplay and infinite scroll, two product features that keep new videos loading without a user choosing the next clip. (reuters.com) Autoplay starts the next video on its own. Infinite scroll keeps adding posts as a user swipes, removing natural stopping points that might otherwise prompt a child to put the phone down. (reuters.com) Britain’s Online Safety Act became law in October 2023 and gave Ofcom, the communications regulator, powers to enforce duties on platforms that host user-generated content and search services. Ofcom has been rolling out the regime in stages, starting with illegal harms and then child-safety requirements. (gov.uk, ofcom.org.uk) Ofcom published its final Children’s Risk Assessment Guidance in 2025 and said services likely to be accessed by children must assess features that can increase harm, including recommender systems, autoplay and endless feeds. The regulator said those design choices can affect how long children stay on a service and what material they are shown. (ofcom.org.uk) That puts Starmer’s comments close to an existing regulatory track: not just what content appears on a platform, but how the product is built to hold attention. The issue has moved from a public-health and parenting concern into a question of platform compliance under British law. (ofcom.org.uk, reuters.com) British officials have been building that case for years. The Information Commissioner’s Office said in its Children’s Code that services used by children should avoid using “nudge” techniques that encourage them to weaken privacy protections or stay engaged longer than they intended. (ico.org.uk) Researchers and child advocates have also focused on heavy use. Ofcom’s most recent children’s media-use research found video-sharing platforms and social media remain central to daily life for British children, with older teenagers especially likely to spend long stretches on video-led apps. (ofcom.org.uk) Platforms have argued that recommendation tools and continuous feeds help users find relevant content quickly, and companies including TikTok, Meta and YouTube have added teen accounts, screen-time prompts and parental controls in recent years. Those companies have also said they invest in age-appropriate experiences and safety tools for younger users. (newsroom.tiktok.com, about.fb.com, blog.youtube) Starmer’s intervention raises the prospect that Britain’s next fights with social platforms will turn less on single posts and more on the mechanics that make the next post arrive automatically. (reuters.com)