Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Monica Harding Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Peter Prinsley]

I understand exactly what the hon. Member says.

My position is this: I support the Government, and I support the Bill, but I think the House should take very seriously what the Lords have asked us to consider. If the Government are not minded to accept the amendment as it stands, I believe there is a strong case for them to bring forward their own proposal to achieve the same outcome clearly and in a timely fashion. Ultimately, this is about setting the right boundaries for children in a digital world that is evolving quickly. There is a clear expectation, inside and outside this House, that we must act.

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

As the mother of four teenage and young adult children, about 50% of my parenting involves placing limits on my children’s phones or devices to limit the time they spend on them. In so doing, I am, like so many parents in my Esher and Walton constituency and across the country, doing battle with a pernicious, invasive and overwhelming force, for which my kids are proxies and against which I can never win. That force has billions and billions of dollars, and the desire and capability to make content more and more addictive every day, so that children spend more time online. The result, as so many studies show, is a negative effect on our children’s wellbeing, mental and physical health, and attention in class and at home. Those tech companies and their algorithmic content are killing kids. It is a public health crisis, and unfortunately, the Government are moving far too slowly to deal with it.

My eldest child was born in the year Facebook began, so my children have spanned the whole Gen Z Instagram generation. My youngest child is part of the TikTok generation. For me, the battle gets harder with each child, but I count myself lucky for not having had an “iPad kid”—a child who receives a device around the age of two. Gen Z children use that pejorative term to refer to younger children who are glued to devices, have short attention spans and throw tantrums when screens are taken away—these are children of two years.

The curious thing about Gen Z and Gen Alpha children is that many of them will say that they wish there were more controls over their screen use and time. They find algorithmic content too much to deal with, and it is having a negative impact on their mental health—so the children are asking us to act too. This generation is growing up with more anxiety and more exposure to harm, and children are less attentive. Every single day it gets worse, so we need to act now.

I have received over 2,600 emails from parents in my constituency asking me to ban social media for under-16s and to address their use of smartphones. I have spoken to school heads about the effect of the technology on their pupils, and parents are overwhelmed and feel completely powerless. A University of Birmingham study has shown that teachers spend 100 hours a week trying to control smartphone use. Headteachers tell me that teachers are doing battle with children as well as with their parents. Children pick up their phones in class to answer calls from their parents. They say, “I have to answer this because my parents are calling me.” That is time away from classroom learning.

Unfortunately, the amendment does not meet those challenges. It gives the Secretary of State optional powers, which they may or may not use, to restrict access to certain online services, and asks only for a six-month progress update. There are no requirements to act, and no timeline for doing so. That is not decisive action; it is a license not to do very much. A delay is being justified through a consultation that is flawed, as many Members have pointed out, and there is a reliance on small-scale pilots when much larger studies already exists. It looks very much like the Government are unwilling to take on the tech giants.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Earlier I asked the Minister whether tech giants and providers of social media have access to the consultation, and she will be writing to me with those details. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that those companies have billions of pounds of lobbying power, lots of bots and lots of volunteers who they could recruit to rig the consultation, and that is why they should not be allowed to participate?

[Monica Harding]

I absolutely agree. Tech companies have billions of pounds, and the consultation also asks children 62 questions. How on earth can a child whose attention has been taken by a phone answer 62 questions? Meanwhile, the world is moving faster than the Government. Even if people think that we should wait, watch and learn from Australia, as others have pointed out, in the United States they do things differently to us and sue. Juries in the United States returned landmark verdicts against Meta and Google. In New Mexico the case against Meta for misleading the public about the safety of its platform, and enabling child sexual exploitation through its design practices, resulted in a penalty that covered 75,000 separate violations of state law. In Los Angeles a jury found both Meta and Google liable for negligence and a failure to warn users about the dangers of their products, and a further 2,000 cases are pending in California alone.

Evidence in those cases included internal documents that were disclosed by the social media companies involved, explicitly acknowledging that their products are addictive, that addictive behaviours harm children’s mental health, and that the design features driving those behaviours—endless scrolling, autoplay, notifications, slot-machine tactics—were made not in spite of their damaging consequences, but precisely because of their addictive effects. That is outrageous, yet the Government are letting them get away with it every day.

What more evidence do the Government need before they act quickly? They are letting down our young people, and parents in my constituency of Esher and Walton are demanding action, not down the line but now. If children cannot resist this content, through no fault of their own, the Government must act for them so that they are not able to access it. Time is not on our side, so for once will the Government please act boldly and quickly, and use powers in the Bill to protect all our children?

[Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)]

We are at a point where it is no longer credible to ignore the scale of the challenge posed by social media to children and young people. Platforms and algorithms are designed and deliberately engineered to maximise engagement, capture attention, and keep users scrolling for as long as possible. As adults, we can take responsibility for our own actions, but for children and those under the age of 16 whose brains are still developing, and who in their teenage years are naturally focused on social interaction and engagement, we have a responsibility to ensure that their mental health as well as their physical health is prioritised.

The harm is happening now; action is needed now, not after another consultation. Parents are asking for help, and as a mum I know how hard it is to set boundaries when a child says, “but everyone else has a phone” or “everyone else is on social media”. There are also serious safeguarding risks because, as we have heard, predators use these platforms to groom and exploit vulnerable young people. While many of us use social media and see some of its benefits, it is not all harmless fun. Shockingly, a quarter of primary school children have already been exposed to pornography, and from violent and sexual content to material that promotes self-harm, misogyny, eating disorders and other harmful behaviours, what young people are exposed to can be deeply disturbing. The problem is that children do not even have to go looking for such content—it finds them. If it is content that we would not want to see as adults, we have to ask what it is doing to our children.

That is why I am pleased to support Lords amendment 38, which would prevent under-16s from accessing and using social media platforms. This is not just a view held by Members on the Conservative Benches. Parents, teachers and safeguarding professionals all want to see change. Crucially, so do young people themselves: they are the ones with first-hand experience of the influence of social media and, according to a YouGov poll, 83% of Gen Z support a social media age limit. We do not have time to waste on this issue. We must act decisively and put protections in place.