Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Government has reviewed recent evidence on the potential impact of social media on users’ mental health.

The Government keeps the evidence on the relationship between social media use and mental health under close review and is committed to ensuring that children’s lives online are safe and enriching. A national consultation is currently underway to seek views on measures to improve children’s online safety across social media, gaming platforms, and artificial intelligence chatbots. The consultation forms part of the Government’s broader programme to understand how technology impacts children’s wellbeing, and what more can be done to help families strike the right balance. Insights from this consultation will help inform future policy to better protect children’s mental health and ensure that digital platforms play their part in promoting safe and healthy online experiences.

With regards to specific evidence reviews, in 2019, the UK Chief Medical Officers published a review of the evidence on screen-based activities and mental health, which concluded that while there is an association between social media use and mental wellbeing, the evidence did not indicate a causal relationship and highlighted the need for more high-quality research. Since then, the Government has continued to work closely with academic experts to review emerging evidence, including studies funded through the National Institute for Health and Care Research.

In January 2026, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology published a research report titled Understanding the impact of smartphones and social media on children and young people, which found a lack of high-quality causal evidence linking children’s mental health and wellbeing and their use of social media. We will now be paying close attention to the recently announced IRL Trial, led by Professor Amy Orben, as this is the first large scale randomised controlled trial investigating how limiting access to social media might affect adolescent mental health.