B

Baroness Barran (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 6 March 2025

Debate

Schools: Mobile Phones

Contribution

My Lords, we are not in a good place in relation to children and phones and social media. We heard from my noble friend Lord Young the evidence of disruption in classes. Parentkind has just published evidence which confirms that and shows that only one in seven pupils have an effective ban in place. Yesterday, we saw the watering down of the honourable Member for Whitehaven’s Private Member’s Bill on the protection of under-16s from social media and smartphones. Surely, with our children, we should be pursuing the precautionary principle. There is so much evidence of a correlation between the rise in mental health problems among young people and the advent of smartphones and social media. Until we know that that is not causation, surely the Government should be acting and not delaying.

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