Mobile Phones and Social Media: Use by Children

David Reed Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

This is the final question.

[David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)]

I am so happy that the Government are finally waking up to this issue and how serious it is, and that there is a cross-party consensus on the need to ban social media for under-16s. Social media platforms are designed to be addictive; we all know that. Most adults cannot control themselves, so how can we expect our children to? Enforcement will be the key issue, so would the Secretary of State please give her views on what she thinks enforcement could look like and on what she has already learned from our Australian friends, who are leading the charge on this with legislation?

[Liz Kendall]

I hope that the action we took last week on Grok shows that the enforcement of existing laws is absolutely paramount. We will definitely be learning from the experience in Australia, not just about how the policy was developed and the definition of social media there, but about enforcement. I am more than happy to report back to the House on that.

Many colleagues have been unable to get on this statement, and I am sure that there are others who want to feed in their views. I really do want to hear from colleagues. We will certainly be organising events in the House for colleagues to come together, and they can also contact the Department to put forward the views of their constituents. That is my job: I am a member of this Labour Government but also the Secretary of State for the country. I believe that, when we get this right, it will be a legacy of which we can be proud.