𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Google’s UK boss has warned that a ban on social media for under-16s is not the “right approach” and risks driving children towards “more dangerous and unsupervised corners of the internet.”

Kate Alessi, managing director and vice-president of Google UK and Ireland, said that the tech giant, which owns YouTube, does not support “blanket bans.”

Her intervention comes amid mounting calls for the government to prevent children from accessing social media, with an outright ban for under-16s currently under active consultation.

The discussion gained further urgency after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer indicated his preparedness to take action against features designed to keep young people addicted to social media.

This follows a landmark US court case last week, which saw Facebook owner Meta and Google found liable for a woman’s childhood social media addiction.

They were ordered to pay $6m (£4.6m) in damages, having been deemed responsible for “deliberately designing addictive products.”

Ms Alessi said Google does not agree with the verdict and plans to appeal.

She said a social media ban is not the answer to children’s online wellbeing and cautioned if countries such as the UK followed the lead of Australia, which introduced a world-first social media ban for under-16s in December, it could have unintended consequences.

Ms Alessi said: “We don’t believe that’s the right approach.

“We believe blanket bans take choices away from parents and push kids out of supervised spaces.”

But she said it was important that “appropriate guardrails” are in place, with YouTube recently introducing features to help prevent addictive behaviours in children and teenagers, such as timers for its Shorts format, as well as customised “Bedtime” and “Take a break” functions.

“We want to make sure our products are built to be as safe as possible,” Ms Alessi said.

“We’ll work with government and continue to partner with them as they work through this,” she added.

The comments come as Google announced its latest community programme to boost artificial intelligence (AI) knowledge and skills to help Britons progress professionally.

It is launching pop-up hubs across the UK to train people on how to get the best out of AI, including “quick win” demos on areas such as how to automate admin tasks and use agentic tools to carry out tasks and research, as well as guides on building a social media presence.

The pop-up hubs – called Squeeze the Juice bars – will be based in Leeds, Liverpool and Birmingham and the Government’s so-called AI Growth Zones in Oxfordshire, the North East, Wales and Lanarkshire.

The firm is also launching a tour of university campuses nationwide, while it has earmarked nearly £2 million in funding through its Google.org charitable arm to help fund AI initiatives run by social enterprise group Inco, children’s charity Chance and the Good Things Foundation.

Google hopes the programme will “uplevel” AI use, with recent research commissioned by the firm showing only a quarter of AI users believe they are getting significant value and only one in 10 see themselves as advanced users.

Ms Alessi said: “Unlocking real value means moving beyond basic adoption to ‘squeeze the juice’ from these tools.

“With AI Works for Britain, we’ll bring practical AI skills to people in every corner of the UK – from juice bars to Jobcentres – to help them use AI to achieve their goals.”