Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what further action the Government plans to take to help reduce the negative impacts of social media on the mental health of young people and wider society.

Protecting children from harm online is a priority for the Secretary of State and the Government. One of the Secretary of State’s first actions in the job was to criminalise intimate image abuse and cyberflashing. We have legislated to make content that promotes self-harm and suicide priority offences in the Online Safety Act. The Secretary of State and I have acted to prevent platforms hosting child sexual abuse material and material that contributes to violence against women and girls by banning AI nudification apps, requiring platforms to take down non-consensual intimate images 48 hours after they are reported, make it so that women only need to report non-consensual intimate images once and requiring platforms to act faster to address intimate images, strangulation pornography, and pornography depicting adults role-playing as children . We have always been clear that there is still more to do.

On 2 March we published a consultation and national conversation which seeks views and evidence on a range of measures that could further protect children online and enhance their wider wellbeing.

The consultation includes exploring banning social media and gaming for children below a certain age and restricting access to risky and ‘addictive’ features and functionalities.