Baroness Berger (Lab)

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 94A, along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Benjamin and Lady Cass, and the noble Lord, Lord Nash. In the interests of time I will not talk about the other amendments, but I commend the noble Baroness on her introduction of this group of amendments. There are a handful of issues that consume me on a daily basis, and the negative impact of social media on millions of children and young people in this country is one of them. Despite the important introduction of the Online Safety Act to control illegal material and prevent children accessing harmful and inappropriate content, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, expertly articulated, not a week goes by in this place when we do not hear how Ofcom is struggling to enact and enforce this important legislation. That law does nothing to protect the next generation from social media, with its highly addictive algorithms, its constant notifications, its ability for unsolicited contact by people unknown to children and its barrage of content that young people are not even seeking or searching for. While it might not fall under the definitions of illegal or harmful, it is still misogynistic, divisive and shaming; diminishes our children’s self-worth; is racist, dangerous, and violent; and contains a disproportionate amount of misinformation and disinformation. We are going backwards because, if we do nothing, the situation will only get worse as the tech companies continue to fight for our children and young people’s attention and develop their social media products to get as many eyeballs on their platforms as they can in the pursuit of profit. As one of the handful of parents in this place with primary-age children, I am deeply concerned by the constant stream of case studies that I hear from other parents about the effect that social media is having on their children, who have had to move school due to bullying on social media, who have had the police turn up on their doorstep due to their children being groomed or exploited on social media platforms, or whose child is in in-patient mental health care for eating disorders they are suffering from that have been amplified due to social media use. I am deeply concerned having listened closely to our teachers, who, as we have heard, are having to grapple on a daily basis in the classroom with the consequences of the content that our children and young people are being bombarded with on social media and the impact it is having on their attainment. That is no surprise, given that Ofcom tells us that the average time our children are spending on these platforms is 21 hours a week.