LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday said his ministers “need to look at” social media design features like infinite scroll in a bid to encourage healthier habits for children online.

Speaking at an event on Monday morning, Starmer — under pressure from his own MPs to ban social media for the under-16s — said he was concerned that even exposure to ostensibly non-harmful online content could be problematic for kids’ development.

The U.K. government is due to launch a consultation in the next few weeks into children’s online safety. It will specifically consider whether to ban under-16s from social media. Ministers on Monday announced they would give themselves the power to swiftly enact findings from that consultation, which will last three months.

Starmer said that “there will be action coming out of this consultation,” even if that’s not an outright ban, and suggested specific features including infinite scrolling and autoplay could be targeted.

“Some of the addictive features on social media that mean you never stop scrolling, or once you watch one thing, another thing comes up and you’re on your screen the whole time, we need to look at that, because even if it’s good stuff, the question is, how do we get people off it and not simply on their screen?” Starmer said.

He reiterated the point in an interview with BBC Radio 2.

“Yes, there’s the sort of overarching question of whether under 16 should be on social media at all … There are features within social media that are intended to make it addictive, so the sort of constant scrolling, the sort of auto player for next thing … all of these are designed to keep young people on-screen, not off-screen. And we have to tackle that,” Starmer said.

This comes after the European Commission made a preliminary finding earlier this month that TikTok’s infinite scroll and autoplay features breached Europe’s Digital Services Act.