Smartphones and Social Media: Children

Debate between Miriam Cates and Andrea Jenkyns

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Miriam Cates]

My hon. Friend is completely right, of course. Studying this topic has made me think more carefully about my phone use. Seeing some of the apps that try to disrupt my concentration as big companies trying to take my time is a helpful way to look at it. As with alcohol, drugs and all sorts of other things, we need to recognise that there is a difference between adults and children. Adults should have free choice about how they use their time; this is about protecting children.

Whatever the solutions, this cannot go on. The problems associated with heavy screen use are presenting younger and younger. A fifth of three and four-year-olds now have their own smartphones. A study last year published in the American Medical Association’s journal JAMA Pediatrics found that more screen time for children aged one is associated with developmental delays in communication at ages two and four. It is little wonder that more and more children are starting primary school unable to communicate, with behavioural and emotional difficulties. This year, a quarter of school starters were still in nappies.

The economic cost of this assault on childhood will be devastating. We have record numbers of young people signed off work with anxiety. Waiting times for child mental health services are measured in years. Our economy and welfare state simply cannot afford to support mass worklessness among the young. There are huge geopolitical risks, too. We spend billions of pounds a year on defence and yet, through the Chinese-owned TikTok, we allow our political enemies direct access to our children in their bedrooms.

In China, under-14s are limited to 40 minutes a day on TikTok, and endless doomscrolling is interrupted by five-second delays. Chinese children are shown only specially selected and inspiring scientific, educational and historical content, but in the US and UK, TikTok feeds our teens stupid dance videos, hyper-sexualised content and political propaganda. TikTok is now the most favoured single source of news among British teens. Our emerging generation is being educated through indoctrination by foreign-owned social media, and the education is often anti-democratic, anti-western and anti-truth. Our enemies are rubbing their hands in glee.

Many people in Britain look to the Online Safety Act to address these enormous issues, and when fully implemented the Act will bring some improvements. It should make it more difficult for children under 13 to gain access to social media, and make it less likely that children encounter the most harmful content. However, even if Ofcom can hold tech companies to account in making the protections highly effective, children will still have free access to social media platforms from the age of 13. Though welcome, the Online Safety Act will not rescue our children.

But the tide is turning. There is hope that the world is waking up to the enormous damage that smartphones and social media are doing to childhood. Governments across the world are taking action. In the US, Florida has banned social media for under-14s, New York has proposed legislation to ban addictive algorithms for children, and Congress is taking action against TikTok. New French Government guidance says that social media should not be accessible to under-18s, and President Macron has spoken eloquently about the need for an age of digital adulthood. In a speech just yesterday, our own Prime Minister raised concerns about children being exposed to bullying, sexualised content and even self-harm online.

Here in the UK, the parents of Molly Russell, Brianna Ghey and Mia Janin, who tragically lost their lives to social media, have bravely spoken about the need to act. Campaign groups such as Smartphone Free Childhood, Delay Smartphones and Safe Screens are organising despairing parents en masse, and calling for collective as well as Government action to preserve childhood. All of them are calling for children under 16 to be freed from a phone-based childhood.

The polling on the issue is decisive. Last week, The Sunday Times published polling by More in Common that showed that seven in 10 Brits think social media is having a negative impact on children, and seven in 10 support banning social media companies from allowing accounts for anyone under 18. Polling from Parentkind produced similar results: it found that 77% of primary school parents back a ban on smartphones for under-16s, and 74% of older teenagers themselves believe that social media is harmful.

Some in Westminster think that using regulation and legislation to protect children from smartphones and social media is an overreaction, or even an un-Conservative thing to do, yet in the country as a whole Conservative voters are the most likely to support strong action: 72% of Tory voters are in favour of a ban on the sale of smartphones to children, compared with 61% of Labour voters. Perhaps the only Conservatives who do not support such measures are those in SW1. The evidence is unequivocal: smartphones and social media are making our children sadder, sicker and more stupid. It is just not good enough to shrug our shoulders and fall back on tired clichés like “The horse has bolted” or “The genie is out of the bottle”. The demand for Government action is clear and growing.

What can be done? First, we must insist that tech companies use highly effective age-verification tools, so that no under-age children have access to social media or pornography. Secondly, we must raise the legal age to use social media accounts to 16. That could be done with a Bill amending the Online Safety Act. Thirdly, the Government should urgently fund phone pouches or lockers for all secondary schools, so that all our children can be free to make the most of their education.

Fourthly, we must tackle the scourge of internet pornography. If platforms such as Twitter, which is the platform on which children most commonly encounter porn, cannot keep porn off their sites, they must be forced to ban under-18s from their platforms, and we must update the law so that all sorts of content that are completely illegal in offline pornography—non-consensual sex; violent, degrading and dangerous acts; and the appearance of minors—are illegal online too. There is no excuse for the lack of parity between online and offline porn. Indeed, 56% of the British public would like to ban online porn entirely.

Fifthly, we need a public health campaign to explain to parents of small children that smartphones and internet devices are not safe for babies and toddlers, and that screen use can cause irreversible damage and developmental delays. Sixthly, just as we have incentivised the research and development of new technologies in other fields, such as energy and agriculture, we should incentivise the development of a new phone that is suitable for children—one that allows one-to-one messaging, phone calls, satellite maps and utility apps, such as online banking, but that has no internet browser or ability to install apps. Seventhly, we should ban TikTok from operating in the UK.

I am not for a moment saying that we should not teach children how to use the internet safely on a computer, or that there are not huge advantages to smartphone technology. I, for one, would be lost—literally—without Google Maps. Yet the internet should be a tool to enhance our lives, not a means through which children can become addicted and be exploited. We should therefore not make the mistake of believing that all new technologies represent progress.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the tech companies will fight all the reforms. Just like the tobacco industry before them, big tech’s business model relies on getting children hooked on their products to provide a lifelong revenue stream. However, it is not only the tech industry that will oppose banning social media for children. There are many well-meaning people, organisations and children’s charities that will argue that social media has benefits for children, particularly vulnerable children such as those who are neurodiverse, have mental health problems or are LGB or gender-questioning. That is a desperately naive position because the more vulnerable the child, the more at risk they are online. If hon. Members do not believe me, they should try creating a TikTok, Discord or Reddit account in the name of a teenager with one of those issues and they will find their feed filled with porn, predators or pro-anorexia content, all to draw the most vulnerable children into a world where they are utterly defenceless.

So many children’s testimonies speak of a stolen childhood. As one girl told Parentkind,

“The other day I was on Instagram. Some random guy started saying I looked like a fat pig and no one likes me. When I tried to get past that I saw a short where a girl looked really skinny and spoke of body goals. I felt so useless and ugly that I cried myself to sleep.”

[Dame Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

The mental health impacts are quite well known, but does my hon. Friend agree that we need to see academia, the NHS and health professionals looking more at the physical implications for the body? We know about the sleep disturbances, but what about the physical implications?

[Miriam Cates]

My hon. Friend is right that much more research is needed on the wider impacts. I believe a study was published just yesterday about the correlation between using a phone while eating and obesity, for example. There are a whole range of different issues that we could explore and I highly recommend Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Anxious Generation”, for a thorough exploration of all the global trends in the area under focus.

Defending children from this wild west is not the action of a nanny state; it is a moral imperative for Governments across the world. In the past, Britain has had a strong record when it comes to child protection legislation. There have been a number of moments in our history when a new danger to children has emerged, public outcry has ensued and Parliament has been called upon to act. In 1838, the Huskar pit disaster in my constituency led to the passing of the Mines and Collieries Act 1842, prohibiting the employment of children in mines. In 1885, after public outcry over young girls being sold into prostitution, this House raised the age of sexual consent to 16. Again, following public outcry over the sale of alcohol to children, in 1901, Parliament restricted its sale to under-16s.

We are now at a similar moment in history. We will look back and ask why we allowed paedophiles, predators, greedy capitalists and foreign enemies unfettered access to our children online. The evidence of harm is irrefutable and the public outcry is growing. Now is the time to act. The Government have less than a year left in office, but if we could pass the Coronavirus Act 2020 in just one day, surely we can use these next few months to introduce effective legislation to protect children from a real and present danger. Indeed, is there any better reason to be in government than to have the opportunity and the power to rescue the next generation?