Social Media Levy: Scotland demands new tax on platforms to protect children
Key Points
- The Scottish Government will push UK ministers for a Social Media Levy reinvested in programmes for young people
- It wants tougher Ofcom punishments for platforms that fail to keep children safe
- Online safety regulation is reserved to Westminster, so Scotland cannot legislate directly
- The Digital Discourse Initiative on online harm will roll out to every school in Scotland
- Scotland will seek regulation of online platforms over tech-facilitated abuse of women and girls
The Scottish Government will press UK ministers to introduce a Social Media Levy on platforms, with the money reinvested into programmes for young people.
The demand appears in the Programme for Government 2026-31, published by the Scottish Government this week, which also calls for tougher punishments via Ofcom for social media platforms that fail to keep children safe.
Online safety regulation is reserved to Westminster under the Online Safety Act, so the Scottish Government said it would continue to push UK ministers to take stronger action on online harm rather than legislate itself.
The government did not specify a rate or structure for the levy, and it did not say how the reinvested funds would be distributed.
Within its own powers, it committed to a public health approach to online safety, supporting children, parents and schools through an online safety and wellbeing marketing campaign.
It said it would address harmful online content and technology-enabled exploitation as part of wider reforms to child protection, including the modernisation of laws to tackle child abuse.
In schools, the government will expand the Digital Discourse Initiative to every school in Scotland so that all young people learn about the risks of online harm, including violent, misogynistic and hateful content.
It also committed to developing an approach to technology-facilitated violence against women and girls, starting with research on survivors’ experiences of tech-enabled abuse in daily life.
The government said it would work with UK and international partners to seek the regulation of online platforms to prevent violence against women and girls that happens online.
It added that it would increase investment in the technology-facilitated VAWG knowledge exchange network to learn from partners tackling the same issue.
