Contribution
I thank hon. Members and the Minister for their valuable contributions and explanations. As the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) said, the status quo cannot continue, and I think everyone can agree with that. Several Members also said that we need a cross-party approach to these issues and, again, I think everyone would agree.
Like many others, I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) for his analysis of the approach we should take to the evidence. The anecdotal and correlational evidence of the effects of social media is known to us all—especially to parents and teachers—and we have heard much of it in the debate, but putting the onus on social media companies to prove that social media is safe, rather than on the regulator to prove that it is not, seems to be common sense, and I was grateful to hear the Minister agree.
Reversing that burden would mean that the social media companies would have to show that the mountain of correlational and anecdotal evidence of harms, which we have all talked about today, is explained by something else, but none of the discussion today has really pointed to what that “something else” could be. Of course, as the Minister says, there are other things—other material is part of the picture—but it is not good enough for the social media companies to say, as they currently do, “Well, it’s very complicated. You can’t prove that our social media is the problem, so we can get away with doing what we like.”
I was therefore heartened to hear the Minister reiterate that everything remains on the table and that this is the first stage of rolling out what the Online Safety Act seeks to do, but not the end of action on this issue. Whatever the burden, the evidence is evolving and, while we wait, our children are losing out. I am a big supporter of evidence-based policymaking, but we as legislators have to make difficult decisions and difficult judgments on the evidence as it is, imperfect as it may be.
Ultimately, of course, a judgment call will be needed, and we should give weight to the precautionary principle. It is clear that social media is part of the context, even if we cannot say that it is 51% of the cause—or however we want to put it. So it is important to say that if it is part of the context, we should take it out or do something more ambitious. But I accept that, as the Minister explained, we need to put the current mechanism in place so that we can at least see what we are dealing with.
Lastly, I want to comment on the contextual point my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) made about the importance of keeping foreign state actors off our children’s screens. That is, of course, an important point, but I just want to acknowledge a big contextual factor here, without perhaps saying too much about it. I am under no illusion about the power of the social media and tech companies. To take the owner of X, who has a role in the US Government, the regulatory regimes are relevant to his bottom line—I think somebody else said that as well. The issues we are talking about do not only concern us here in Westminster; they may well involve relations with other countries, and how we go about persuading people who we want to help us in different ways to make the very bold changes that may ultimately be needed.
I will end on that because it is one of the most difficult aspects, which is perhaps why it has not been talked about too much today. Nevertheless, let us not worry about the difficulties, because we are all united in the desire to do something about this issue. For me, that is one of the big, important things that has come out of today: we are united in trying to sort it out, so let us all work together and do it.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered e-petition 700086 relating to a minimum age for social media.