Online Harm: Child Protection

Claire Young Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

We think that the current priority is ensuring that under-16s are taken off harmful social media platforms, but I am sure that there is room for a market to develop, over time, that will not feature negative algorithms and activity, and that there is a world in which new products could retain the essence of positive social interaction.

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

Is the hon. Lady not concerned about the possibility that if we simply ban a list of social media platforms, we will provide an opportunity for new ones to develop and cause a problem while not allowing existing ones to develop in ways that will be less harmful?

[Julia Lopez]

I am sure that the issue of the functionality list can be explored as time goes by.

It is important to point out that this is not a moral panic but a structural problem. Today the Leader of the Opposition gathered a panel of grieving parents who had lost their children, and in that context negative online activity was recognised to have real-world and utterly tragic consequences. The children had been drawn into dangerous challenges, coercive relationships, bullying and bribery, all of which created despair in those young minds.

That showed us plainly why the pioneer phase must now come to an end, at least where children are concerned. Pioneer societies do not remain lawless forever; eventually they are retrofitted with rules and boundaries, and protections for the vulnerable. It is striking that, after years of the problem building up, countries around the world are reaching the same conclusion with remarkable synchronicity—not because it is fashionable, because Governments are copying one another or because anyone thinks that this will be particularly easy to impose and enforce, but because the evidence has accumulated to a point at which denial is no longer credible. If social media were broadly harmless for children, this would not be happening, but Governments with very different. political traditions are acknowledging the same reality: that when it comes to children, some control must be wrested back. I suspect that this trend will be reflected vividly in the Chamber today, with examples from across the nation of what is happening in the real world because of the laxity in the online world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

As a society, we are raising the first generation of children who spend less time outdoors than prisoners do. Ministry of Justice guidelines state that all prisoners in the United Kingdom should have a minimum of one hour in the fresh air each day, yet research tells us that a worrying number of our children do not meet even that threshold—because they are confined not by bars and locks, but by screens.

Astonishingly, the Centre for Social Justice found that up to 800,000 children under the age of five are already using social media. The Association of Play Industries has released a report that highlights just how little our children are moving. The research places adolescent social media use at three to five hours every single day—a figure that has grown by 50% in under a decade. They socialise through social media, form their identities through social media and build their understanding of the world through social media, but what they find there is not a safe or nurturing space.

Children on TikTok encounter harmful content every 39 seconds. By the age of nine, one in 10 children has already been exposed to pornography. By age 11 that figure rises to more than one in four. This is not accidental exposure; it is a predictable consequence of placing children in unregulated digital environments and hoping for the best. Beyond the content itself, the very act of compulsive scrolling is taking a toll. Children are exhibiting the hallmarks of addiction anxiety when separated from their devices. They are experiencing declining attention spans, disrupted sleep and a growing inability to engage with the world in front of them.

Every hour spent staring at a screen is an hour not spent outside—not spent running, exploring, falling over and getting back up. It is an hour not spent in the kind of unstructured, unscripted play that builds resilience, creativity and social intelligence in ways that no algorithm can replicate. This was beginning to happen when my own children were young. At that time, a significant push factor was the fear that children were not safe roaming freely in the physical world. It is a sad irony that the very social media platforms that are providing an ever-increasing pull factor have created an online environment that puts children at risk of harm. Stranger danger is now online.

A 2025 University of Exeter study of 2,500 children aged seven to 12 found that 34% did not play outdoors at all after school on school days, and 20%—one in five—did not play outside on weekends either. Many children do not even get the hour promised to prisoners. The years that children spend outside are crucial. To replace that with an unregulated and harmful social media environment is to actively harm our children. That is why I support stopping under-16s from accessing harmful social media and why it is crucial that we get this right.

Getting it right means focusing on reducing harm. A blanket approach risks removing children’s access to helpful user-to-user platforms such as Childline. We must also ensure that we do not let young people loose at age 16 into a wild west of social media without any training in the safer foothills. These are concerns that charities such as the NSPCC have raised and which a film-style age rating would address.

It also means ensuring that there is flexibility to deal with future developments, such as AI chatbots, which have already been mentioned by a number of Members. We got into this situation because change in the tech world has far outpaced both our ability to adjust as a society and our legislative process. That is why I welcome the careful, collaborative approach being put forward. The 643 constituents who have written to me on this issue would expect nothing less.