Social Media Use: Minimum Age

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 700086 relating to a minimum age for social media.

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. The House is considering whether social media should be banned for children under the age of 16. I start by thanking Kim Campbell, who is in the Public Gallery, for submitting this petition, which has gained over 130,000 signatures. Kim believes that the answer to the question posed is yes. When I asked my two boys, aged 14 and 10, whether social media should be banned for children, their answer was predictable: [Hon. Members: “No!”] No—of course. But when we ask the same question of UK adults, the overwhelming majority respond: [Hon. Members: “Yes.”] Yes—75% of them, in fact, according to a poll published last month and based on a survey of 2,000 adults, I think. On the same theme, I asked my constituents in Folkestone and Hythe last week whether smartphones should be banned in schools. Almost 2,000 responded and, again, 75% thought that they should—I must say that many of the 24% who thought that they should not looked to me as though they were still at school themselves.

Are adults imagining a problem here? Do we just not understand our young people? I have heard it said more than once that most adults do not see how important social media is to young people’s social and digital identity and that we cannot teach boundaries if we ban access to these apps altogether. I totally agree that social media can be a space where young people can build positive relationships with their peers, reduce loneliness, improve coping skills and improve general knowledge and creativity—social media can of course be a wonderful tool, but it is currently a wild west where there is too much harmful content.

Does my hon. and learned Friend agree, given where we are with social media today, that legislation just has not kept up with the pace of change? We are far behind in being able to deal with and tackle this issue, given how extensive social media usage is. Our pace of change, in terms of legislation, just has not met that demand.

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. The legislative regime that we have at the moment, as I will come on to say, will require risk assessments. The state of the evidence when the Online Safety Act 2023 was being passed is different from the evidence that we have today, so the nature of those assessments and of the risks is necessarily different. As I will come on to say, we need to look at that on a continual basis.

As I was saying, social media can be a wonderful tool, but it has become a wild west where too much harmful content is being pushed on to young people, and social media companies are simply not doing enough to tackle it. The sad fact of the matter is that social media is pushing content that radicalises, that catalyses mental health crises and that is highly addictive. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, last month raised the alarm about how extremist ideologies are reaching children as young as 12 through social media platforms, and young people radicalised by social media are on its books. That, of course, is a growing threat to national security.

Another issue is mental health crises. We are seeing skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, eating disorders and even suicide among adolescents.

I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend on an excellent speech. On that point, students from Brighton Hill community school in my constituency recently raised the issue of the significant impact that social media was having on their mental health and wellbeing. Does he agree that it is not just adults who are concerned, but young people, and that they should be involved in the review of legislation, because it is they who are seeing the most detrimental impact on their health and wellbeing?

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and I congratulate the children in his constituency on taking a very sensible approach. It is interesting that children themselves are coming forward and saying that—perhaps because they see the harms that I am talking about and want to do something about them. We have seen cases where children as young as 14 have taken their own lives after being bullied or exposed to harmful online content. During preparation for this debate, I was informed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that there is an online website posing as a community that encourages suicide. That is the dark and depressing side of the online world that we have to do more to tackle.

What about addiction? Social media platforms are designed to exploit vulnerabilities in our young people. Algorithms push harmful content—body image issues, self-harm or anxiety videos—directly on to their feeds. A recent survey showed that on TikTok the algorithm was 4,343% more likely to show toxic eating disorder content to users who were already vulnerable to such issues. Many Members will have seen the Channel 4 documentary “Swiped”, where a secondary school took the phones of year 8 pupils for 12 weeks to see what would happen. The results were impressive: children talked to their friends more, reported less anxiety and were more focused in class.

Given that 70% of youth services investment has been slashed since 2010, does my hon. and learned Friend agree that we need to provide opportunities, aside from school, where children can interact before taking away one of the few places that they have to spend time with their peers?

My hon. Friend raises a really important point. This cannot be about shutting down avenues for young people to socialise with each other. Whatever action is taken to make it harder for young people to access social media, we have to make sure that other things are going on in society so that they do not feel that that is the only place they can go to socialise.

The petitioners’ view, as I said, is that we should ban access to social media until children are 16. I spoke to the NSPCC before this debate; its position is that it does not think an outright ban is the answer. Without changing the software or the devices, a ban on children using social media—without doing more—would be unenforceable. The NSPCC’s view is that a ban would push children into unregulated and more dangerous online spaces.

Does the Online Safety Act do enough? Several people I spoke to in preparing for this debate think that it does. For example, there is a requirement for social media companies to conduct children’s access assessments to determine whether children are likely to access their platform. There are online age assurance measures that require social media companies to assess whether their services are likely to be accessed by children and to adopt robust methods such as photo ID matching, facial age estimation and mobile network checks.

Age assurance measures are of course right, but groups such as Smartphone Free Childhood do not believe that risk assessments, and the Online Safety Act more broadly, go far enough. They do not advocate for an approach of risk assessment and risk reduction methods; rather, they say that the onus should be on the social media companies to demonstrate that their apps are safe for children to use and that, if they cannot, their app must not be used by children. That seems to be the opposite of putting the onus on the regulator to prove that an app is dangerous or harmful. It might well be that that would be something the code of practice under the Online Safety Act could do. It would require tightening that code of practice, so it would be useful to know whether the Minister agrees that the Act would be capable of reversing that burden, and that we ought to think about those methods.

Does the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that, while legislation can go so far, we have a broader responsibility as adults in society and as parents—myself included—to make sure that we monitor not only what our children are using and how they use it, but our own habits? A headteacher in my constituency was alarmed that she had to write to parents to tell them that when they collect their infants from the playground, they should put their phones away and have eye contact and engage with their children.

The hon. Lady makes a common-sense point: if we are going to advocate for change, we have to lead by example. It might be said that the harms we are talking about are a somewhat separate issue to that. Of course we need to take responsibility, but where we have social media companies that are pushing content that is objectively dangerous, we need to have the conversation that we are having today about how the system and social media companies should be forced to ensure that that space is a safe one.

I thank the parents who have brought forward this petition—they are often way ahead of us as legislators when it comes to issues affecting children’s safety. My hon. and learned Friend is doing a very good job of setting out some possible risks that the Online Safety Act will not fully be able to mitigate some of the challenges that we are seeing. Considering robust measures on the age of access to social media is timely and important in thinking about the best way of protecting young people from possible exposure to online harm. On top of that, though, we must recognise that some exposure is always likely to be there. Would he also agree that it is important to ensure that we think how, through the curriculum review, we can best empower and set up children, young people and their parents to protect themselves from harm where they are exposed to it, even with the stronger regulations that we are looking to put in place?

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We will not protect children through just Government or social media while expecting parents to do nothing. Of course, we parents will have to do our part. Interestingly, on that point, I was going to say that an important potential measure is the approach put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) in his private Member’s Bill, the Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill. His concept, which I hope to hear more about in the course of this debate, is about raising the age of data consent from 13 to 16, which essentially stops the social media companies being able to harvest data and keep feeding the kind of content that will be harmful. That seems to me a no-brainer.

Very briefly, I want to talk about smartphones in school, an issue closely connected to the one posed by the petitioner. Many teachers and parents who I have talked to believe that this “never seen, never heard” guidance, which was introduced by the previous Government, is not working. We have students still using phones during break time and often during lessons, and the problems that that causes are significant. I have had many teachers say to me, “This takes up so much time—it is a huge distraction and it interferes with learning.”

Prior to entering Parliament, I worked for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a type 1 diabetes charity, and one of the issues that came to light when this measure was previously proposed by the Government was the fact that children who might need to use their phones to monitor their type 1 diabetes, or who have parent carer’s responsibilities, need to have an exemption. That creates a stigma between children who might have a medical requirement to use their mobile device and those who do not. How would the hon. and learned Gentleman see this measure interacting with that?

Every school has to comply with the Equality Act 2010. Whatever policy a school puts in place, one would have to check that what they are doing complies with the law. Those sorts of exceptions would obviously have to be looked at very carefully.

We do not have to look far to see examples of local areas that have banned smartphones in schools, such as the London borough of Barnet.

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for mentioning the action that has taken place in the London borough of Barnet, for which I have the honour of being one of the three Members of Parliament. I have been working closely with local teachers in primary schools and secondary schools and with the fantastic Smartphone Free Childhood campaign in north London, led by a wonderful volunteer called Nova. We now have 103 primary schools in the borough committed to going smartphone free from September. Every secondary school has also said that they will go from year 7 or upwards—with some going further and faster—to go smartphone free. That is not just “not seen, not heard”, but headteachers working together, so that they have safety in numbers and are backed up by their MPs, to say that, unless there are specific exemptions that apply, smartphones will not even be allowed on the premises.

Further to an earlier point, it has also been really encouraging that some teachers are going further and saying that parents should also not be allowed to use smartphones on the grounds, for the reasons that have been pointed out. I thank my hon. and learned Friend for raising Barnet. It has been fantastic to work with the campaign locally to support parents and young children in my constituency.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his activism and organising on this issue. I know that he has played a big role in the outcomes that he has just described.

An example more local to my Folkestone and Hythe constituency is a policy designed by the John Wallis academy in Ashford in Kent, where students put their mobile phones in a locked pouch during the day. The principal, Mr McBeath, had intended that the rule would limit disruption in school and support safeguarding. I, for one, will be advocating for that whenever I speak to headteachers in Folkestone and Hythe. I commend the work being done by Smartphone Free Childhood nationally and by its group in Folkestone and Hythe. It is important to work closely with everyone involved to address the problems that social media use is creating for our young people.

I am conscious of all the other people who want to speak as well as the Minister, but I have a few questions for him, one of which I have raised already. Is the code of practice likely to be robust enough in the coming years, as we see more evidence of the harms caused by social media? What changes may be needed as time goes by? Is Ofcom striking the right balance between safeguarding children from harm and ensuring economic proportionality? Is there anything that Ofcom is doing or can do to tackle the small but high-risk sites I mentioned earlier, which act as online communities and encourage things like suicide? Last, what measures can the Government take to get ahead of AI development to ensure that children can be effectively protected from the risks posed by AI so that our politics can forge technical progress? That is enough from me. I look forward to hearing others’ contributions.

Order. I remind Members that, even if they have put in to speak, they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate. The debate is well subscribed, so I ask hon. Members to stick to about six minutes. I will not impose a time limit now, but that should enable everybody to speak. Finally, Mr Speaker has made it clear that if people are called to speak, they should be here for the wind-ups, as in the Chamber.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and to be here today to support the petition calling for social media companies to be banned from allowing children under the age of 16 to create social media accounts. I stand here today in complete agreement with the over 700 Reigate constituents who signed the petition urging us to take action on this important issue.

As a mother of three, I spend much time worrying about the impact of social media and screen time on my children and their peers. When I was growing up, in the school holidays I was out playing with my friends, climbing trees, building camps and learning the critical social skills that we all need in adulthood. Now, instead, we do not let our children out, and the only world we allow them to explore is a fantasy one that is rife with risk and does not equip them with the life skills that they need.

When children are online, they can interact with predatory individuals without realising, see unrealistic body images that batter their self-esteem and be convinced that black is white by false information. That is extremely damaging. Many adults fall for those things, so how on earth do we expect our children not to? It is no coincidence that we see a mental health crisis in our young people at the same time as mass adoption of smartphones and access to social media. Yes, increased mental health support is needed, but the best remedy is to remove the root cause.

I note that the previous Conservative Government took some welcome first steps in the fight to safeguard our children through the introduction of the Online Safety Act. Thanks to that Act, providers must be proactive in removing illegal content such as child sexual abuse material, and they must protect children and young people from content that is harmful. That could include harassment, abuse, bullying or content about suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. The Act also includes welcome measures to prevent children from accessing online pornography, something I particularly welcome in the light of the huge damage that material does to both our girls and our boys.