Up to 5,000 children in UK city to have social media limited for six weeks as part of new mental health study

DAILYMAIL.COM • 11h ago

By ROBERT FOLKER, NEWS REPORTER 00:42 11 Oct 2026, updated 00:47 11 Oct 2026

Thousands of children will have their social media blocked for six weeks to see if it improves their mental health.

The study, taking place across 12 schools in Bradford, aims to examine what impact restricting access to social media will have on the behaviour of children and teenagers.

For the next six weeks, 4,000 to 5,000 children aged 12 to 15 will have their social media accounts restricted and monitored.

Some pupils will only be able to use the ten selected apps for two hours a day, along with a 9pm curfew.

While others will be allowed to carry on as usual, but with their usage tracked.

The apps included in the trial are TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Threads, X, Kick and Twitch.

Students will fill in short questionnaires at the start and end to share how they’re feeling, covering things like anxiety, sleep, body image and school life.

Researchers are looking to find out what social media apps pupils use the most, and at what time of the day and for how long they use them.

The restrictions can be overridden at the press of a button but pupils will be given points for sticking to rules, which increases their chance of winning a £100 prize voucher on top of the £20 voucher they receive for taking part.

The £1.2m study, led by the Bradford Institute for Health Research and the University of Cambridge, is understood to be the world’s first randomised controlled trial of social media restrictions.

Trial manager Dr John Pickavance told The Times: ‘We want to know if they are getting better sleep, will they be doing more physical activity, or will they just replace it with other forms of screen time – TV, video games, other things on the phone. And are other forms of screen time more or less harmful or beneficial?’

One pupil, Lois Oredein, 12, said: ‘It’s better to socialise online sometimes because it can be awkward in real life. I speak to my friends on Snapchat. And I watch funny videos on TikTok, just for like two hours each day.’

Her classmate at Appleton Academy in Wyke, Bradford, Hannah Osin-Ntimoah, added: ‘A lot of people learn stuff from social media and they can contact their friends. It’s not because of social media that young people are depressed.’

It comes in advance of the government’s social media ban for under-16s, which is set to be introduced next spring.

The crackdown is set to go further than Australia’s by taking ‘world-leading’ action on gaming and live-streaming platforms so strangers will not be able to contact children.

The restrictions will be required to be switched on by default for children up to 17. And the Government is also looking at potential overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for under-18s.

Further action will see so-called AI ‘romantic companion’ chatbots – designed to simulate sexual relationships or roleplay with users – having to enforce a minimum age of 18, while there will also be age restrictions on AI chatbots more widely.

Encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal will not be included in the UK’s ban.

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