Who Decided the Options? The Hidden Stage of Policy Consultation

In January 2026, the UK government launched a public consultation on children’s smartphone and social media use, but with a notable constraint: instead of an open call for ideas, ministers presented a shortlist of predetermined options. Should social media be banned under a certain age? Should the digital age of consent be raised? Should overnight curfews or limits on “addictive” features be imposed? This pre-narrowed approach raises fundamental questions about how governments develop policy options and the implications for consultation credibility.

The Missing Formative Stage

Best practice holds that proposals should be at a formative stage when the public is consulted, not a done deal. Yet the government’s approach suggests that critical option development work occurred behind closed doors before any public engagement began. The shortlist focuses heavily on restrictive interventions: age bans, stricter age checks, feature restrictions and curfews. This reveals a particular diagnosis of the problem (harmful platform design and premature access) and a corresponding treatment philosophy (prohibition and control).

What’s conspicuously absent is any evidence that alternative problem framings or solution pathways were seriously explored before settling on this menu. Were preventative approaches like digital literacy programmes, mental health support or enhanced parental skills development genuinely considered and rejected based on evidence? Or were they never part of the internal policy development process at all? The consultation materials provide no insight into how ministers arrived at their shortlist, what evidence informed the selection, or which options were discarded.

This opacity matters because it goes to the heart of whether the consultation represents genuine openness. If option development has already progressed through problem definition, evidence gathering and option appraisal to reach a shortlist, then the formative stage has essentially passed. The public is being invited to comment on conclusions already reached through a process they had no part in shaping.

The Politics of Predetermined Options

The timing and political context suggest option development may have been driven as much by political imperatives as evidence-based policy analysis. The consultation arrived just as MPs pushed for an immediate under-16s social media ban, with the Opposition accusing the Prime Minister of using consultation to dodge a tough decision.

This raises uncomfortable questions about how the shortlisted options were selected. Were they chosen because they represent the most evidence-based, proportionate responses? Or because they allow the government to appear decisive whilst deferring actual commitment? The inclusion of a potential ban option may owe more to vocal campaigns by bereaved parents and media pressure than to systematic assessment of effectiveness, enforceability and unintended consequences.

The Exclusion of Alternative Framings

The shortlist’s composition suggests a fundamental choice was made during option development about who bears responsibility for children’s online safety. By centring on platform restrictions and access controls, the government has implicitly decided that tech companies and their product design are the primary locus of intervention. This crowds out approaches that place responsibility elsewhere: with schools (through digital citizenship education), with health services (through early intervention for vulnerable children), or with parents (through better support and tools).

The National Children’s Bureau warned against “relying on blunt restrictions” like blanket bans, noting that evidence doesn’t show such approaches address root causes of harm. Yet the option development process appears to have screened out system-wide interventions in favour of platform-focused ones. This narrow framing of where solutions should be applied may reflect political calculation (regulating Big Tech plays well publicly) rather than evidence about what would be most effective. Citizens who believe the answer lies in building children’s resilience rather than restricting their access may feel their entire philosophy was dismissed before consultation even began.

Framing Bias in Presented Options

How options are framed can profoundly shape responses. If the consultation asks “What should the minimum age be for social media: 13, 14, 15, or 16?” it frames the debate as not whether to raise the age, but by how much. This reveals that the option development process has already concluded that raising age limits is desirable.

Unless a “keep as is” option exists, respondents opposed to age restrictions are forced into picking the least-bad option rather than stating their true preference. This suggests the option development work was never truly exploratory.

Implications for Policy Robustness

The opacity and apparent narrowness of the option development process carries significant risks. UK courts require consultations to be conducted fairly, with decision-makers having an open mind. If the government developed its shortlist without rigorous assessment of alternatives, or if overwhelming consultation evidence against featured options is ignored, affected parties might claim the entire process was predetermined.

Digital rights advocates warn that an under-16s ban “would amount to building a mass age-verification system for the entire internet” with “serious risks to privacy, data protection, and freedom of expression”. If such concerns were never properly weighed during option development, the resulting policy becomes vulnerable to challenge.

Moreover, policies born of narrow option development may face lower public compliance. If stakeholders feel their perspectives were excluded from the formative stage, they are less likely to accept outcomes even after consultation.

Conclusion

The UK government’s shortlisted approach reveals how critical the pre-consultation option development stage is to consultation legitimacy. By presenting predetermined options without transparency about how they were selected, what alternatives were considered, or what evidence informed choices, the government risks conducting consultation on conclusions rather than genuinely formative proposals. Lasting solutions require not just consultation on options, but transparent, exploratory development of those options in the first place.

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