Zak Ringelstein saw the wave coming. When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stood up on June 15 and declared social media addictive by design, the Zigazoo founder felt no shock. Only recognition. Governments have begun to treat mainstream platforms as hazards for anyone under 16. Ringelstein built his company on the bet that they would.
“These are global dominoes,” he told Fortune. “The under-16 social media bans are spreading. And the next place will be the U.S.”
The numbers back his view. Australia flipped the switch first. Its ban took effect December 10, 2025. Platforms faced fines up to A$49.5 million for failing to block users under 16. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, YouTube and others fell under the rules. Messaging services like WhatsApp stayed out. Six months later young teens who already had accounts often kept using them, according to The New York Times. Yet experts expect the next cohort of children to grow up differently. The precedent proved potent.
Britain followed fast. Starmer’s government aims to pass legislation before Christmas. The ban lands in spring 2027. Same age cutoff. Same list of usual suspects. Nine out of 10 parents surveyed by the government backed the move. A separate YouGov poll showed 74 percent public support. Starmer framed the policy as giving children their childhood back.
The list keeps growing. Reuters tallied more than a dozen nations shifting in the same direction. France approved a ban for under-15s in January 2026 with Senate action pending. Spain targets under-16s. Denmark set rules for under-15s. Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and others joined the chorus. In the U.S., 19 states already limit minors. Eight impose outright bans or demand parental consent. Federal momentum builds around the Kids Online Safety Act. Senator Ted Cruz signaled support in May. Reuters noted the bill cleared a key hurdle.
Ringelstein didn’t wait for politicians. He started Zigazoo in 2020 as a former elementary teacher and father of three. Pandemic lockdowns made the problem obvious. His kids came home from school and asked about friends, not lessons. Existing apps offered no safe outlet. “TikTok — really terrible for kids,” he said in the Fortune interview. Instagram told the same story. YouTube carried too much detrimental content. The fix seemed simple on paper. Give kids a place built for them.
Zigazoo now claims more than 12 million users. That figure sits far below Instagram’s 3 billion or TikTok’s 1.9 billion. Yet the investor list signals belief. Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, Ciara and Russell Wilson, Jimmy Kimmel’s Wheelhouse, Christina Aguilera’s family and Charlie D’Amelio backed the company. Partnerships stretch across the NBA, Major League Baseball, U.S. Soccer, Nintendo, Netflix, DreamWorks, Disney and Apple TV. Ciara posts there herself.
The product draws a sharp line. Age verification comes first. Adults cannot contact minors. No direct messaging between strangers. The algorithm avoids raw engagement chasing. It pushes creative tasks and age-appropriate material instead. Ringelstein calls it a developmentally appropriate walled garden. Human moderators watch over the experience. When Australia prepared its law, government engineers reached out to Zigazoo’s team for technical advice. “This is rocket science,” Ringelstein said, “to keep kids safe at scale — especially with AI.”
Recent features test the model further. Live video arrived. Big YouTube creators popular with children can stream directly to verified young audiences in a moderated setting. Ringelstein tried it during a school career day. He named five top creators. Every child in the room recognized them.
Mainstream platforms responded to the bans with familiar language. A TikTok spokesperson told Fortune the company shares the goal of safety. It pointed to more than 50 preset teen account protections and ongoing technology investments. Meta highlighted its Teen Accounts that limit contacts and content. Both firms questioned whether bans truly solve the problem. They warned of isolation and migration to unregulated corners without proper device-level age checks. Meta added that handing over ID to every service creates friction.
Ringelstein remains unconvinced. He argues the big apps cannot retrofit themselves. They grew on adult incentives. Their business models reward maximum time spent. Changing that foundation at billion-user scale would mean tearing down the house and starting over. “They are becoming basically tobacco companies or alcohol companies,” he said. They chase young users early so habits stick.
His own path explains the conviction. Ringelstein grew up in rural New Hampshire. His parents worked as a social worker and childbirth educator. Neighbors helped each other in practical ways. The values stuck. He taught through Teach for America, founded an edtech company later acquired, studied abroad in Africa under Jeffrey Sachs and even ran for U.S. Senate in Maine as a Democrat. These days he serves on Donald Trump’s AI Task Force and advises the First Lady’s office on children’s digital safety. Party lines matter less than the issue.
The original COPPA law dates to 1998. It feels ancient in an App Store world. Ringelstein helped shape later attempts at update. One version passed the Senate 92-3 near the end of the Biden years only to stall in the House. Bipartisan agreement exists on the diagnosis. Kids spend too much time online. Much of the content harms them. Political maneuvering often blocks remedies.
Critics raise fair points. The Brookings Institution and Unicef worry about civil liberties and unintended consequences. Bans might drive children toward unmonitored spaces. Early Australian data shows enforcement challenges. Compliance rates vary. Age verification technology still carries gaps. Yet Ringelstein sees the trend as irreversible. Millennials have become parents. They experienced the downsides firsthand. They push for change.
Zigazoo gained exemption in Australia. The law targets platforms defined by certain social features that mainstream apps possess. Kid-focused services built with safety first receive different treatment. The UK appears likely to follow a similar carve-out approach. Ringelstein doesn’t fear American bans killing his business. He believes the big competitors will struggle to adapt while his product already meets the new standard.
What builds real happiness? He poses the question. Family, friends, service, religion, nature. Society talks about those things but rarely organizes around them. Social media often pulls in the opposite direction. His company tries to tilt the balance back. Not by removing technology. By shaping it to fit children’s actual developmental stage.
The dominoes keep falling. Indonesia banned under-16s in March. Malaysia acted in June. European nations draft tighter rules. TechCrunch cataloged the accelerating pace across continents. Each new law spotlights the same tension. Parents demand protection. Platforms defend their models. Regulators hunt for workable enforcement.
Ringelstein positions Zigazoo as proof that alternatives exist. Built from the ground up. Moderated by humans. Focused on creativity over addiction. Whether it scales to challenge the giants remains unproven. But governments have started to listen. They call his engineers. They study his methods. And they write laws that, intentionally or not, open space for exactly what he spent six years constructing.
The experiment unfolds in real time. Australia offers the first test case. Britain will deliver the second. The U.S. may deliver the largest. If Ringelstein reads the signals right, his accidental tech career could find itself at the center of a massive shift in how the next generation connects online. Or fails to. The difference, he insists, lies in who builds the platform first. Kids or adults. Safety or scale. The bans make the choice clearer than ever.
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