Laura Kyrke-Smith

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I would like to declare an interest: a family member of mine is employed by Smartphone Free Childhood. I speak today not just as a politician, but as a parent. My children are not yet old enough to be on social media, but my wake-up call came when my then seven-year-old daughter put a smartphone at the top of her Christmas list. I am fearful about what is to come for my kids, and I want the Government to be fully on my side as my family navigates the teenage years. I support the Government’s decision to ban social media for under-16s, and I urge them to move quickly to clarify the details and implement the ban, starting by bringing forward the regulations. The reality is that for years we have been allowing social media companies to access and influence our children unchecked. If we were talking about anything other than social media companies, whether that is toy manufacturers or pharmaceuticals, we would have put the precautions and protections in place already. We have not, and while the causality can be hard to prove, it cannot be pure coincidence that this period of growing screen and social media use has coincided with the rapid decline in young people’s mental health and wellbeing, poor sleeping patterns, poor school attendance, increasing rates of self-harm and eating disorders, as other hon. Members have mentioned. We have been putting children into an online environment that overwhelms their still-developing brain functions—as Jonathan Haidt has set out very powerfully—and the harms are clear. I fully respect the views of those petitioners who say that there are benefits to young people being able to access social media, including the 430 people in my constituency who have signed this petition. However, I think that the view of these petitioners does not contradict a ban of the kind that the Government are taking forward. It is a ban on platforms built to encourage addiction, such as through infinite scrolling or streaks. It is also a ban on strangers being able to access our children and cause harm. It is not the end of children being able to communicate with family and friends or seek out community or help if they need it. It is the start of them being able to do that safely. Why is this the right way forward? I will briefly share three thoughts. First, I think this sets a new norm, and that is so important. Parents feel trapped in a no-win situation, where they either allow social media and risk harming their child, or refuse it and risk their child feeling socially excluded. Many young people reach early adulthood and wish that they had never had the excess or pressure of social media, but by then it is too late. Young people will say that to me, and they say, “Please do not stop us communicating with our friends, but please help me manage this addiction that I have to live with.” The age limit of 16 removes those pressures and creates a new shared norm that childhood does not need to be lived on and through social media. Secondly, a ban is inclusive and equalising, because the reality is that not all parents have the knowledge, time or capacity to manage all the parental controls. I notice a pattern whereby it is often the parents with a bit more time, income or freedom who make active decisions to keep their children off social media. But that is tough for parents, and a ban for under-16s removes that burden from individual families—from the parents and the young people. It ensures that all children have the same protections, regardless of their background or family situation. Thirdly, this ban is so important because it gives us the clarity to start thinking about alternatives. We have been stuck in this debate for a long time. If children are simply not allowed social media and that is decided, what might their childhoods look like? The science shows that executive brain function develops through practice in the real world—through play, face-to-face interaction, sustained attention and unstructured time. What policy interventions will encourage children to spend more time outside? How do we create environments where they can play without structure and without the performance that social media requires? What do the best practice online learning tools look like if some of those addictive design features are removed? There are so many vital policy questions that we are freed up to address, once the rules on social media access for our children are clear. I will make a final point on one aspect of the ban that is particularly important to me. Last year, I had a serious and harrowing case in my constituency where a 12-year-old boy was groomed by an AI chatbot. It encouraged him to leave school, turn against his parents, run away from home, engage in a highly sexualised dialogue, and even suggested that the boy and the chatbot might meet in the afterlife. This should never, ever have happened, and no other 12-year-old should be exposed to harm in this way. I pushed hard on this at the time, and I was very grateful to the then Secretary of State for taking note and for including AI romantic companion bots in the ban. However, I continue to urge ambition and clarity as that aspect of the ban is taken forward. We may find that just regulating romantic companion bots is not enough, as others have said, including my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan). The social media ban is not about some sort of rose-tinted return to childhoods of the past; it is about giving children the right protections in our digital age. It is about allowing them to benefit from the very best of the online world, educating them about it for adulthood but doing so in an age-appropriate way, and setting them up to be safe, happy and successful, both online and offline.