Within months of Australia banning social media for under-16s in December 2025, over 60% of children who had an account before the ban still had some form of access to it and over half felt it made no difference to their online safety. The rule existed, but behaviour has barely changed.
That gap, between the boundary a policy sets and the boundary a child actually experiences, is the real story in digital wellbeing right now, and it’s also one most UK parents are already grappling with at home, long before any legislation arrives.
As policymakers debate age limits and platforms come under growing pressure to act, parents are left with a much more immediate question: what can I actually do in my own house, today, to help my child build a healthier relationship with technology?
The instinct is to focus on devices. Limit the phone, delete the app, set passcodes, but devices are only one part of the picture, and the easier, more effective point of control sits a level beneath them: the home network itself.
The Home Network Has No Rules at All
Parents are not short on rules. Bedtimes, screen-free zones at dinner, a clear idea on who their child can talk to and what they can watch – these boundaries are second nature in the physical world. But according to Ofcom data, 76% of UK children aged 5 to 7 have access to a tablet, and two in three children aged 5 to 16 have an internet-connected device in their own bedroom. UK children are spending 23 hours online each week, including using AI tools, streaming and livestreaming themselves, up from 16 hours in 2022.
The home network connects every one of those devices, at all hours, in every room. Most networks apply the same rules to all of them: none.
The Worry is Real, The Follow-Through Is Not
It’s not that UK parents are in denial. BBC research found that 67% of parents worry about what their child is watching online, and 83% believe their child’s screen time needs limits. There’s a clear majority who see the problem clearly.
The trouble is what happens next. Only 45% actually restrict when or where their child gets online, and what’s behind that gap is mostly fragmentation. Most consumer parental controls live inside individual apps and devices, the operating systems rather than the network, so families end up managing it device by device, a setting buried in the tablet, another in the console, another in the laptop, each one a setting children quickly learn to work around.
One in seven parents will admit, if asked directly, that they’re not confident they know what their child is actually seeing or hearing online. Because six connected screens and six separate sets of rules is not a coherent policy, it’s a household constantly playing catch-up.
A Ban Stops at the Apps It Names
The UK is heading towards its own restrictions on under-16 social media access from 2027, and it’s tempting to treat that as the fix. But a platform-level ban only governs the platforms it names, and there’s already concern that a ban could push children’s behaviour sideways rather than stopping it, towards smaller digital platforms, some considerably less safe than the mainstream social apps.
A ban that lives on a named list of apps leaves the rest of the internet completely untouched. A child shut out of one platform on one device still has a tablet, a console, and a bedroom connection, none of which check that list at all.
The Network Is the One Place All of It Connects
Every device in a home, regardless of platform, age rating or app store, passes through the same network. That makes it the one point where the family’s actual rules, rather than just good intentions, can be applied consistently: pausing access at bedtime, treating a child’s devices differently from an adult’s, seeing at a glance what’s connected and when.
None of this requires waiting for a ban to take effect or trusting that a platform will enforce its own age limits accurately. It is something a household can put in place today, and it doesn’t rely on a child’s cooperation to work. The shift, from managing devices one by one to managing the network as a whole, mirrors something already happening across the smart home more broadly: less fragmentation, more coherence, less reliance on remembering to check six different settings before bed.
And critically, it doesn’t have to mean constant surveillance. Good digital wellbeing for children isn’t about reading over their shoulder, it’s reasonable visibility paired with reasonable boundaries. Parents don’t need to track every app or every minute spent online to feel in control. They mostly need a general sense of how time is being spent, and a straightforward way to pause access when something else, sleep, homework, dinner with everyone actually at the table, matters more.
Parliament Moves Slowly, the Network Doesn’t Have to
Most parents already agree screen time needs boundaries. That much was never the problem. The problem is that the home network, the one system every device in the house depends on, remains the only part of the household with no rules built into it at all.
Legislation might narrow that gap eventually. But Australia’s experience suggests it won’t close it on its own, and families can’t really afford to wait and see. Whatever regulation does eventually land, households will still need something that works now, across every device, without requiring anyone to become a network engineer in their spare time. Wait for the law, and the gap stays wide open until it lands. Fix the network, and it closes tonight.
By Emilie Schuller, Marketing Manager EMEA at NETGEAR
