Скачать или смотреть Social Media Use : Minimum Age Debate

(Debate 24th Feb 2025)

A number of people have been in touch to ask my views on the campaign to restrict access to social media to under 16-year olds. Here's a video of what I told parliament on this subject nearly a year ago and my view has not changed.

We are facing an epidemic of youth mental illness, which, I fear, may affect today's young people into their adult lives, and the evidence that social media is driving this is compelling.

We know the damage smartphones are doing to our children: apps that are designed to addict; shorts that affect concentration (and neurological development in younger children); an over-connectedness that is driving anxiety and disrupting children’s sleep; and content that distorts children’s relationship with reality about bodies and lifestyles, which is damaging to their self-esteem. Even if protected from explicit pornography - which far too many are not - the general timbre of much social media content is still sexualising the human body and causing children to think about themselves and others in sexualised ways at too young of an age.

We already regulate childhood in various ways to protect children, such as with laws that set age limits drinking alcohol or entering nightclubs; the requirement for disclosure and barring service checks to protect children from coming into contact with adults around whom they would not be safe; and film classifications to ensure content is age-appropriate. Yet, were the content that children can access on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, or X, to be classified by the British Board of Film Classification, much of it would rightly be considered, rated 18.

We need to ensure that whatever we do about these problems actually works, so we must watch closely and learn lessons from where social media age restrictions are being implemented to make sure we get this right; but what is clear is that the status quo is not good enough, and we cannot merely rely on "education" and self-regulation to protect our children from harm.