A SOCIAL media ban for under-16s could come into effect quickly after the government promised a rapid implementation of the results of a consultation on an Australian-style ban.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has committed to tightening rules on teenagers’ use of the internet while voicing concerns about the impact of AI chatbots on children.

He suggested that a key measure could be to limit technology that allows “doomscrolling” at an event yesterday.

Despite saying he was “open-minded” about the idea, he did not commit to a full ban on under-16s use of social media as was implemented last year in Australia.

He said: “We also need to act very quickly, not just of the age concern, but on the devices and applications that make the sort of auto-scrolling, the constant glueing to the machine that you can never stop scrolling.

“We’ve taken the powers to make sure we can act within months, not years.”

In an earlier post on the website Substack, he wrote that social media has “evolved to become something completely different from the simple, stripped-back pages it was in its conception.

“And in that evolution, it has become something that is quietly harming our children.”

The government confirmed that Online Safety Act will be extended to AI chatbots in the wake of a recent controversy surrounding Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, which allowed users manipulate existing images to make people nude in them.

Tech firms that breach these rules can face punishment of up to 10 per cent of their global revenue and their access to the British market could be blocked by the courts if pressed regulators.

Sir Keir’s government will also promote legislation to preserve data instead of wiping it when a child dies and social media is deemed relevant.