Telegram founder warns social media ban could mean more political arrests
“Is this really about protecting children — or identifying more people to arrest?” Pavel Durov writes on X.
Author: Alex Dhaliwal
As the Liberal government prepares a social media ban for minors in Canada, Telegram founder Pavel Durov is warning about Britain’s plan to ban under-16s from social media, saying it will not protect children but will instead push them deeper into the internet’s darkest corners while expanding government surveillance through digital age ID checks.
The UK will block under-16s from major social media platforms next spring, with additional restrictions on livestreaming and messaging for 16- and 17-year-olds. The current minimum age is 13. The Liberal government has also tabled Bill C-34 as its own social media restriction measure for minors.
The UK plans to introduce strict age verification for under-16s accessing social media, aiming to prevent users from bypassing restrictions seen in Australia’s similar system, where some minors have still managed to evade controls.
“Banning social media for teenagers only puts them in greater danger,” Durov wrote on X. “Teens are forced to switch to VPNs—and unlock far worse illegal content.”
“We’ve seen this before,” he said. “When the Russian government banned Telegram, 95% of Russian teenagers kept using it. They just moved to VPNs.”
Reports say age checks would be applied when a new phone is set up, rather than at the individual social media account level.
Officials favour the approach to avoid repeated verification, while U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the measures a “new normal for future generations.”
Device-level age verification on iOS or Android would shift responsibility away from apps and is backed by Meta. Privacy advocates, however, say Ofcom’s age checks under the Online Safety Act have already expanded beyond their original intent.
James Baker of the Open Rights Group says platforms not covered by the Online Safety Act have still added age checks, with iPhone, Spotify, Xbox, and PlayStation users already facing ID verification.
U.S. tech firms affected by the ban, including Google and Meta, say it would cut children off from key information. TikTok is the top news source for UK 12–15-year-olds, followed by YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Ofcom, the UK media regulator, says more than 90% of 13–15-year-olds and about 80% of 10–12-year-olds already use social media.
The success of the ban will depend on its age-verification system, which already uses tools such as facial age estimation, credit card, bank and mobile checks, photo ID matching and digital identity wallets under the Online Safety Act.
“All social media users in the UK will have to “prove” they’re over 16 — with an ID, face scan or bank card,” Durov writes, noting that thousands in the UK are already arrested for political posts every year.
“Is this really about protecting children — or identifying more people to arrest?”
Similar concerns have been raised in Canada over Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, with critics warning it could be used to restrict speech deemed to undermine “social stability” or “harmful” views that may “foment hatred.”
Christine Van Geyn of the Canadian Constitution Foundation says the bill’s “harmful content” and “hate” definitions are too subjective. She argues it echoes Trudeau’s failed Online Harms Act and could pressure platforms to remove controversial speech, effectively acting as a federal speech regulator.
Hate speech is already illegal in Canada under Criminal Code provisions. Previous bills to expand regulation to legal online content deemed “likely to foment detestation or vilification” failed.
Combined with a social media ban under 16, porn age verification (Bill S-209), and a Digital Safety Commission, Bill C-34 becomes an “everything-at-once” approach to online safety.
However, Durov states, “No law can replace good parenting.”
“Parents already have the tools to limit kids’ digital consumption: parental controls, screen-time limits — or no smartphone at all,” he writes. “Instead, many parents give toddlers iPads just to keep them quiet.”
“No amount of regulation will fix that.”