Tony Vaughan

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and I congratulate the children in his constituency on taking a very sensible approach. It is interesting that children themselves are coming forward and saying that—perhaps because they see the harms that I am talking about and want to do something about them. We have seen cases where children as young as 14 have taken their own lives after being bullied or exposed to harmful online content. During preparation for this debate, I was informed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that there is an online website posing as a community that encourages suicide. That is the dark and depressing side of the online world that we have to do more to tackle. What about addiction? Social media platforms are designed to exploit vulnerabilities in our young people. Algorithms push harmful content—body image issues, self-harm or anxiety videos—directly on to their feeds. A recent survey showed that on TikTok the algorithm was 4,343% more likely to show toxic eating disorder content to users who were already vulnerable to such issues. Many Members will have seen the Channel 4 documentary “Swiped”, where a secondary school took the phones of year 8 pupils for 12 weeks to see what would happen. The results were impressive: children talked to their friends more, reported less anxiety and were more focused in class.