Age checks will close the front door. Who’s watching the kitchen?

Ofcom is about to tell Parliament how to prove a user is over 16. That is the easy part.

By Terence, founder, The Off Switch

Before the end of October, Ofcom is due to hand Parliament a rapid assessment of a deceptively simple question: how do you reliably check that someone online is over 16?

It is the next milestone on the road to the under-16 social media ban. The government announced in June that under-16s will be kept off Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. Regulations are due before Parliament by the end of this year, with the protections expected from spring 2027. Ofcom’s guidance for the platforms is due in the months between.

I hope Ofcom gets it right. But it is worth remembering where we are starting from.

Thirteen was the rule. It was more of a suggestion.

In July, Ofcom’s own report on age assurance found that social media companies had failed to enforce the minimum ages they already set. Not a new law. Their own terms and conditions.

So yes, the regulator is right to focus on making age checks work properly. Without them the ban is a press release. But even a perfect age check only does one job: it decides who gets through the door.

It does nothing about what happens inside the house.

The gap no regulation reaches

Look at the rules children now live under. Since 1 September, schools in England have been phone-free by default, under statutory guidance. From spring, the platforms will be told to keep under-16s out. Sixteen and seventeen year olds are due to get a default midnight to 6am curfew, with infinite scroll and autoplay switched off.

That is a lot of rules for the school day and the app store. Now look at the hours in between.

The kitchen table at nine at night. The homework that keeps getting interrupted. WhatsApp, which is outside the ban. And, if we are honest, the adults at the same table, answering one more email, checking one more notification.

The right to disconnect code of practice is not now expected until early 2027. The children are getting rules. The grown-ups setting them are mostly on their own.

America’s answer: brick it

Across the Atlantic, the fashionable fix is “bricking” your phone. You buy a small device, and your distracting apps stay locked until you physically go back to it. Tom’s Guide called Brick “an essential gadget for every home” on 5 October. Fox News ran a piece asking whether everyone is bricking their phone.

The trend tells us something genuinely useful. Willpower is not a plan. Screen time limits that can be dismissed with one tap of “ignore limit” are not a plan either. People want a physical, deliberate act that puts the phone back in its box.

Where I would disagree is the idea that British families need to import the answer. Brick lists at £44.75 in the UK and ships from the US (price checked 12 October 2026). In Britain, of course, “bricking it” means something else entirely. It means being scared stiff, which is roughly how a lot of parents have felt since June.

Stop Bricking It

That is why we built The Off Switch, and why our campaign this autumn is called Stop Bricking It: stop panicking, and stop overpaying.

It is a tap card, about the size of a bank card, from a UK company. You choose which apps go quiet in a free iPhone app. Then you tap the card against the phone, and those apps stay quiet until the card is tapped again. Calls and texts always get through, so the school, the childminder and your nan can still reach you.

There is no subscription and no account, and nothing leaves the phone. It costs £20.

It works for the adults too. That matters, because children copy what we do far more faithfully than what we say.

What I would ask of three groups

Parents. Do not wait for spring. The ban will take away the apps. It will not teach anyone how to put a phone down. Pick one evening a week and practise. The ban starts in spring. Practice can start tonight.

Schools and PTAs. Your phone policy is excellent until 3.30pm. Then it ends at the school gate. We offer schools and PTAs a free partner code: families get 10% off, and 20% of every order goes back to the PTA. One line in the newsletter, with no cost, no stock and no IT.

Employers. The right to disconnect is coming, slowly. You do not have to wait for a code of practice to make evenings quieter. A £20 card sits well inside HMRC’s £50 trivial benefits limit, and from 250 cards it can carry your logo.

The honest bit

A card will not fix the internet. Neither will a ban, or an age check. What they can do together is make the healthy choice the easy one: the regulator closes the front door, and families get a simple way to keep the evening quiet.

They’re banning the kids. Who’s banning you?

If you lead a school, a PTA or a wellbeing programme and want to talk, message me here or email

terence@off-switch.co.uk. Everyone else: off-switch.co.uk.

Sources: Ofcom, Use of Age Assurance Report 2026 (published 15 July 2026); UK government announcement on under-16 social media restrictions (15 June 2026); Department for Education statutory guidance on mobile phones in schools; Tom’s Guide (5 October 2026); Fox News (24 September 2026); getbrick.com (price checked 12 October 2026).