According to reporting by The Sunday Times, Narayan said he would consider restrictions on popular gaming platforms as part of a proposed social media ban affecting teenagers.
What Kanishka Narayan said after visiting Australia
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has recently promised “decisive” action on the effect of social media on children. The government has not yet set out exactly what that means.
Possible options being discussed include measures similar to Australia’s ban on social media for under-16s, which was introduced last year, or narrower restrictions on specific design features such as:
- Infinite scrolling
- Autoplay
- Location sharing
- Tools that connect children with unknown users
Australia’s law does not cover gaming platforms, although it does include the streaming service Twitch. Its effectiveness has already been questioned, and gaming was debated before being left out of the final rules.
Narayan said that during a recent visit to Australia, one of the biggest issues raised with him was “stranger pairing,” meaning the ease with which adults can be matched or connected with children they do not know.
He said this concern came up “mostly in the context of gaming platforms,” though he did not name individual games.
“So that will weigh quite significantly in my mind as we think about how we stop some of the most egregious harms for young people,” he added.
Children’s commissioner says gaming must be part of the debate
Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, has also argued that any serious child online safety plan needs to include games, not just social media apps.
Speaking to Sky News, de Souza said a social media ban alone would not “solve the world’s problems,” particularly because many boys spend more time gaming than scrolling traditional social platforms.
“Boys often aren’t on social media,” de Souza said. “They’re often spending three or four hours a day gaming. And those games often have features that allow a 55-year-old in Arizona to come in and speak to a nine-year-old.”
She said the debate should not be framed as a ban on children themselves.
“I wouldn’t be calling it a ban of children – I’d be calling it a ban and restriction on services that are not suitable for under-18s,” she said.
Her comments point to the emotional centre of the issue: parents are being asked to manage a digital environment that can feel both ordinary and opaque. For children, a multiplayer game can be a playground, a chat room, and a social network at once. For regulators, that creates a tidy little nightmare.
Why a blanket ban would be difficult to enforce
The UK government has not reached a final decision on what restrictions, if any, it will introduce. It is also unclear whether gaming platforms would be formally included in a future ban or subject to separate rules.
A blanket ban on children speaking to strangers in online games would be difficult to monitor and maintain. Games vary widely in how communication works, from voice chat and text chat to friend systems, matchmaking, private servers, and platform-level messaging.
There are also practical questions ministers would need to answer, including:
- How platforms would verify a child’s age reliably
- Whether children could still communicate with friends of friends
- How restrictions would apply across consoles, PCs, and mobile devices
- What would count as a “stranger” in multiplayer matchmaking
- How enforcement would work when companies are based overseas
The clearest concern is simple enough: children should not be exposed to unsafe contact from adults online. The details are much messier, especially in games built around multiplayer interaction.
For now, this is still part of a broader political argument about children’s digital lives. But the direction of travel is clear: gaming platforms are no longer being treated as separate from social media. For millions of children, they already are social spaces. The government appears to have noticed, slightly after the children did.
