Dame Meg Hillier

Dame Meg Hillier

Labour (Co-op) — Hackney South and Shoreditch

Speaking in the House of Commons on 16 May 2025

Debate

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Contribution

I do not have time to completely unpick the hon. Lady’s points, but to have something positively suggested is a big issue for young people, so the social media aspect is important. The social network matters. At the point of puberty, teenagers will look to their social group, which will massively influence their behaviour in a way that their families will not. Adolescents are more likely to take risks: their neurodevelopmental underpinnings are different, and pathways between the rational and the emotional parts of the brain are not fully developed. In “a hot situation”, where there is a lot of emotion, they take more risks, particularly because they do not have the ability to think about the counterfactual. In this case, the counterfactual is not being here anymore; that is a very difficult thing for a lot people to understand, particularly young people. The ability of young people to think flexibly and change their minds is in the front of the brain, which does not always react to the—

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