Neuroscience and Digital Childhoods

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dame Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship for the very first time, Ms Butler. As you know very well, digital technology is no longer simply a tool or a luxury plaything; it is a foundational part of our way of life here in Britain, like the electricity that powers our kettles or indeed the very air we breathe. Part of the environment in which our children grow, learn, play and communicate, it shapes how the next generation interacts with the world. However, like the air we breathe, digital technologies can be polluted.

I am, as I may have mentioned at times, an engineer and a tech evangelist. I champion the benefits that these technologies bring, but I also recognise the profound concerns that they raise for children’s physical and mental health, as well as for their cognitive development. That is why the Select Committee for Science, Innovation and Technology is undertaking an inquiry to examine neuroscience and digital childhoods, and I am glad to see members of the Committee present.

We want to move beyond the surface-level debate to ask the difficult scientific questions about what is happening inside young minds and the developing brain. The inquiry will build on previous evidence gathering. Last year, as part of our investigation into social media, misinformation and harmful algorithms, we went deep into the workings of the platform companies, particularly the business models that drive their social media operations. Meta’s market capitalisation is about equal to the entire UK public sector budget. With such financial power driving content into children’s lives, it is vital that we understand what drives those companies.

Social media companies rely on advertising-based business models, where clicks and likes matter most. As a result, they are designed to push content that drives engagement to the point of addiction, often without sufficient regard for whether that content is accurate or trustworthy. The digital advertising that incentivises recommendation algorithms is under-regulated and highly concentrated, with Facebook and Google the dominant players. They encourage the creation of material built to perform on social media above all else, and that includes misinformation and disinformation.

As part of that inquiry, we identified five key principles essential for public trust: public safety, free and safe expression, platform responsibility, user control and transparency. Although the Government accepted all our conclusions, they rejected all our recommendations, such as better regulation of how algorithms rank, recommend and amplify content, better regulation of digital advertising, the inclusion of artificial intelligence in the Online Safety Act 2023 and a right to reset. Had they been implemented, some of the harms we now face would have been at least partially addressed.

In March this year the Committee held a one-off session to investigate the proposals for social media age restrictions. We took evidence from clinicians, experts in social media on both sides of the debate, bereaved family members, representatives of those with direct experience of harms and those monitoring the early implementation of the age restrictions brought in in Australia. During both inquiries, Committee members were struck by the extent of the evidence base for a wide range of significant harms from the use of social media—evidence that is consistent, strong and temporally linked to its use. We heard distressing testimony about media health impacts on children, including suicide and suicide ideation, exposure to and normalisation of sexual and violent content, eating disorders and body dysmorphia, health and nutrition misinformation, and physical health, brain development and sleeping disorders.

Governments worldwide are currently debating social media and phone bans for children. In December last year Australia banned social media for under-16s. France looks likely to follow suit with votes for an under-15s ban clearing the French Senate in March. Spain, Portugal, Greece and Canada all have similar proposals under way, and the UK Government are consulting on various protective measures, yet there is a gap in our collective knowledge. Although there is lots of evidence on how much time young people spend on digital devices, we have far too little evidence on how the devices affect children’s development. We also lack clarity on the different impacts of different types of exposure, from social media apps to screen time more generally. Our objective is to map the existing evidence and, crucially, identify where the gaps lie. Our aim is to understand how digital devices influence brain development in children and adolescents. We will examine the resulting impact on physical health and mental wellbeing, behaviour and educational attainment. We will assess how the impacts vary based on individual characteristics, including age, sex, socioeconomic background and ethnicity.

In our inquiry we will distinguish between active and passive engagement. Is there a neurological difference between a child playing a game and a child passively scrolling through an algorithmically driven auto-playing video infinite feed? We will look across activities—gaming, social media, television and messaging—and across various devices, whether they are hand-held, wearable or fixed technologies.

A key focus of our inquiry is the short, medium and long-term effects on brain and eye development. We will explore neurological and hormonal processes, including the role of dopamine releases and potential links to behavioural conditions. We will also look at the indirect effects on sleep and vision and the impact on eye development. We want to hear from those at the heart of this—the children and adolescents themselves. Their views on their own digital lives are vital to our understanding.

We also want to hear from experts, particularly experts in every stage of brain development. The ultimate goal of the Committee is to ensure that policymakers and parents have a better understanding of the evidence on the impact of digital devices on childhood. Then we can decide as parents and policymakers where we want to erect barriers, mitigate harmful impacts or extend beneficial impacts in order to optimise the physical and mental wellbeing of our children. We must ensure that the digital childhood supports development rather than undermines it.

I look forward to hearing the evidence and the questions from Members today.

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for her report from our Select Committee, which I particularly enjoy working on. I find it very useful to bring people such as the social media companies before the Committee. We had a very—shall I say—vibrant meeting with them recently. Does the hon. Member agree that they are not doing enough in this space, and that we need to get them to do an awful lot more and to take responsibility?

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for his work on the Committee. It is always incisive and rooted in a desire to get the evidence. I agree with him. I understand the big tech companies are in No. 10 Downing Street this morning talking—or I hope listening—to the Prime Minister about this very subject: the importance of children’s wellbeing in digital technology. That in itself is testament to the fact that they have not done enough. We should not have got to this place, where our children are living through the harms that I spoke about and that the Committee heard about in its evidence. The companies’ incentives, driven by advertising revenue and profit making, should be in second place to children’s wellbeing and the safety of the products and services that they put out to our young people—and indeed to all our citizens.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I welcome the Chair of the Select Committee’s launch of a new inquiry on digital childhoods. Like her, I sit on the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and was disturbed when I asked the big tech companies how much money they make from children. They said that they do not make much because they cannot make advertising revenue from them, so I asked whether it was altruistic—to which there was tumbleweed and then the admission: “Actually, no, it creates a user base”. I am paraphrasing, but even the use of the word “user” with reference to our children is deeply concerning.

I welcome this inquiry. I believe plenty of evidence already demonstrates a direct link between being miserable and an increased use of online devices. I welcome the fact that we will hear from experts, and that we can be guided by their guidance. Does my hon. Friend agree that, given last year’s report and the evidence from this inquiry, in addition to the social media ban consultation that is going at the moment, the Government might not just listen and agree, but actually do something about it?

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Member for her question and her contribution to the Committee, which is always driven by a desire to ensure that technology works for people in this country. Her questioning of the tech companies about their approach to children was very illustrative of a lack of concern about the outcomes on children. The financial rewards are certainly there in the long term. However, the companies should be doing the research that we are and understanding the impact of these vast money-making machines on young people and children. That we are having to do that, and that they cannot speak effectively to the safety of their products and services, is remarkable. I want to emphasise that they bring benefits as well, but it is not appropriate that this should be unregulated and that our children should be exposed to uncertain, unknown and uncontrolled harms.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Chair of the Committee, along with the Select Committee Members, for their hard work for the lives of young children in the past and in the neuroscience and digital childhoods inquiry. The Select Committee’s work is important and vital in modern society. I have a particular interest in online activities relating to those who could pervert the minds of children but also in relation to eating disorders, which the Chair mentioned—I thank her for that.

There is a role for the parents, but I think many parents are just not sure what this will do to their child. As the grandfather of six children, I understand some of the threats on their tablets, laptops, phones and so on. When the investigation is complete, the questions are asked and the inquiry is done, will the hon. Lady and her Committee share it with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland? It is very important that we are in tandem with her recommendations.

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Member for his question, as well as his valuable work and concerns in this area. I echo his concerns about mental wellbeing and eating disorders. The Committee heard evidence that a false account of a young girl aged 14 or 15 was inundated within a few hours with misinformation about unhealthy eating and, basically, the promotion of eating disorders. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about sharing the report’s findings with the Administration in Northern Ireland. We will certainly make sure that happens in terms of the regulatory environment.

I am not sure that I fully answered the question from my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) about Government action. We are looking for speedy Government action in response to this inquiry, and we hope that both our conclusions and our recommendations will be accepted by the Government in this case.

[Dr Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I welcome this new inquiry looking at children and young people’s device use. There is a growing feeling that there is a causation between screen use and poor mental health outcomes, and we are now having to drill into brain science and neuroscience to provide evidence back to tech companies to justify why we need regulation. Does my hon. Friend agree that, although it has come too late, fundamentally, we need to find that evidence?

Does my hon. Friend also agree that we need to encourage all our young people and parents to respond to the Government’s consultation on a social media ban? We need to go further than a ban at age 16. The voices of young people and parents will contribute to evidence on this and make an informed and better policy.

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for her contribution to the Committee, which is always rooted in and driven by her profound understanding both of biological and chemical sciences and of the life of a woman scientist in the research community.

To the two points that my hon. Friend made, the industry has not learned from the examples of smoking and other harmful products and services. The sector is creating vast revenues and is responsible for the majority of the stock market capitalisation in the US. It has the resources to understand the impacts of its products and services. It also has the talents and fantastic research capabilities; we see that in its innovative new products and services. Yet the sector does not understand, or share its understanding of, the impact of its products and services on children’s developing brains.

Every generation’s childhood is unique and different—the first generation to be literate, or the first generation to have television—so it is not necessarily that change is bad. Understanding what change means is in the interests of the sector as well as the interests of parents.

To my hon. Friend’s final point, the Government clearly see the need for change, which is why we are having the consultation, and have been proactive in making that clear. It is important that as many people as possible, particularly young people, respond to that consultation. I would also encourage as many people as possible to respond to the Committee’s call for evidence, so that when change comes, which I hope will be quickly, we can ensure that we make the right decisions based on the right scientific evidence and the right understanding of what people in this country want to see happen in this important area.