Social Media: Ban for Under-16s
Monday, 2 November 2026
Contributions
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)Labour
I beg to move, That this House has considered e-petition 757233 relating to the proposed ban on social media for under 16s. It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I declare an interest as the parent of a 15-year-old and an 11-year-old. These are issues that we, as a family, are dealing with, so this is a timely debate. I thank Leo Rhodes from Thirsk and Malton, who started this petition, as well as the 217,682 who signed it, including 267 in Folkestone and Hythe. I also pay tribute to the Smartphone Free Childhood group in my constituency for its tireless organising and campaigning on this issue, as well as the headteachers, students, parents and others in my constituency who have engaged with me on this issue and driven change in our schools. In June, the previous Prime Minister announced that social media companies would be prohibited from offering their services to under-16s. Because of this Labour Government, the power now exists under section 214A of the Online Safety Act 2023. Regulations are due before the end of the year, and the first rules are expected to apply from spring next year. The published model uses a banned list of platforms, similar to the measures in Australia. Leo, the petitioner, does not support a ban. He believes that, “for many young people social media is how they communicate with their friends. Some…view social media as a lifeline. A community, a supportive network.” He is making a serious argument about friendship, belonging and self-expression. Barnardo’s makes a point that all adults need to hear: the online world has become a vital civic space for young people partly because real-world spaces have been eroded over decades, made worse by austerity. Think about the closures of libraries, youth centres and grassroots sports facilities, which this Government are seeking to address. That is all true, but does it mean that we should allow these companies to provide their products on whatever terms they choose, especially when their products are made to be addictive, create so many dangers and cause so many harms that these companies are not addressing—all while raking in huge profits? Here is the interesting thing: groups that have disagreed in public about a ban have all signed one joint statement. That includes Smartphone Free Childhood, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Molly Rose Foundation, People vs Big Tech and FlippGen, which is a Gen Z-led organisation. They all say that “a binary debate between banning children from social media or not can oversimplify what is a complex issue.” Their position is that companies’ access to children should be made “conditional on their ability to demonstrate that they are safe.”
Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)Labour
As the parent of a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old—sorry, that was a while ago. As the parent of a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old, I have been speaking about this for so long. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that we should give young people more credit for their ability to understand and articulate the challenges they face online? They are not simply passive users of social media, and their views deserve to be taken seriously in this debate. It is important that we get across to everyone listening that we want to do things together. We do not want to do things to young people; we want to do things with young people.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is key that the young people affected by this have a seat at the table, so that their views are heard and taken into account by Ministers when the position on the ban and how companies might escape it is being finalised. I agree that it is fundamental that they feel included.
Claire Hazelgrove (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Lab)Labour
I declare an interest as the proud patron of local youth charity, the Foundation for Active Community Engagement, which co-hosted my “Coffee with Claire” event, listening to young people and those of all ages across my community. I ran that event, along with an online survey, to listen to people, including young people, about their experiences and views. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that it is important that, when we look at these regulations, we make sure we avoid cliff edges—where young people might be completely cut off from social media and then exposed to it all on one day? There is a possibility, as we look at lowering the voting age, that some people’s first day of accessing social media could also be the day that they cast their first vote.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We cannot have cliff edges. We have to build young people’s skills to be able to navigate this online world so that, when that point comes, there is not a cliff edge. And support should be available because, let us face it, young people rely on these technologies for all sorts of support. Those organisations are clear that companies must earn the right to offer services to under-16s by meeting strict safety standards. That means fixing the design, not just taking down the odd post. It means removing contact by strangers, disappearing messages, live location sharing, endless scrolling, autoplay, harmful algorithmic feeds, streaks and notifications. There must be mechanisms to catch new features that put children at risk, and the consequences must be ones that companies cannot simply absorb as the cost of doing business. At the Labour conference, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said that there will be a way for companies, if they want to innovate and change, to get themselves off the ban list, but that it is up to them. She also said it is a sign of failure that we have got to the point of taking children off social media altogether. I respectfully agree, so I ask the Minister whether the regulations to be laid later this year will create that route off the list? Will the ban come first and the route later? Let us take questions that young people are actually asking me about a ban, because they are good ones. First: “Won’t we just get around a ban?” That is a fair question, and the Australian figures are sobering. The Australian e-safety regulator found that, between March and April this year, 12% of children used make-up to look older or used someone else’s ID to circumvent the ban.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)Liberal Democrat
I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way, although I confess that I would rather see the social media companies give way and accept ways of cleaning up their act, rather than young people having to give way and lose their access. He mentioned the checks, and passports and driving licences will be required. Does that not disproportionately disadvantage poorer households, which are less likely to have those documents?
The hon. Gentleman raises a very interesting point, and Ofcom has recognised various different methods of age-verification. We must not exclude people based on whether they have one or other particular document. The Australian e-safety survey found that in 11% of cases a parent had helped a child to get around the ban. Those are sobering statistics that have to be taken into account, but most children in Australia who were still on restricted platforms did not actually need to get around anything. Around three in five said that the platform had simply taken no action on their existing accounts. The technology did not fail in their situation; the companies just did not use it. We are in a different place. As I understand it, Australia asks the platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent access by children. The UK position is that we require highly effective age assurance, and last week Ofcom confirmed that four methods of age verification could be used to meet the test at 16. My question to the Government is whether they foresee using any or all of the methods set out in the Ofcom report as a mechanism to police a ban.
Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)Labour
My hon. and learned Friend is giving a powerful exposition on the arguments. He mentioned Australia, which has prompted a number of colleagues, including me, to sign a letter to the Government saying that five essential things, including age-verification, are needed to avoid the mistakes and perils that Australia has experienced. We also need parental involvement, privacy by design, and companies to be accountable by default. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that any effective ban must include some of those steps?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Those mechanisms—those tests—are all key in deciding whether a ban can be implemented and can work.
Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)Labour
My hon. and learned Friend is being very generous with his time. Does he share my concern that the Molly Rose Foundation’s research shows that 61% of Australian 12 to 15-year-olds are still accessing the platforms from which they are supposed to be banned? Does he agree that this potentially exposes some weaknesses in the concept of a platform-based ban and that a functionality-based ban should be considered instead?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have to make sure that we are dealing not just with lists, but with functionality. We are laying down the gauntlet to stop children’s access. The next question is: if these companies want to have access, how do we allow that safely? If that cannot be proved, they should not have access to children, as far as I am concerned. I want to address the issue of virtual private networks. Some people say, “Look, children are just going to get around a ban”, but most children who get around age checks do it in simpler ways. In Australia, only one in 20 had used a VPN. Platforms already know a great deal about where their users are. There must be a duty on them to understand where their users are and to prevent children from gaining access. Barnardo’s goes further and wants VPNs to be age-gated. My understanding is that the Government have ruled that out for now, so what evidence would make them think again? It is an important point where the evidence is key. The second question that young people often ask me is, “Won’t we just move somewhere worse if a ban comes into place?” Young people in Australia report using messaging apps and gaming platforms more following the ban. Australia’s e-safety regulator did a three-month evaluation of 803 children aged 10 to 15 before the ban came into force and again in March to April this year, and the share using messaging apps daily or more rose from 40.5% to 52%. The share playing video games online every day rose from 26% to 29%, which is also significant. That is why the rules must follow the features wherever they appear, including gaming, messaging, AI and app stores. A third question is, “If something goes wrong, can I still tell somebody?” Research for the Molly Rose Foundation found that girls’ confidence to tell a teacher falls from 55% to 36% if they are still on a banned app. The message to that cohort must be that it is the platform that broke the rules in that situation, not them. These are not sanctions on individuals; they are duties on the companies. A fourth question, which an hon. Member mentioned, is, “What about my support network?” For LGBT, neurodivergent and isolated young people especially, we need a transition plan so that they know how to retain access to confidential advice networks and safe online support before restrictions take effect, alongside investment in welcoming local youth services. A fifth question is, “Where is the proof that a ban would work?” The long-term studies are not yet in, but last week Ofcom published its first report on content harmful to children. It concluded that there had been no significant change in the proportion of children encountering harmful content nine months after the children’s safety duties came into force, and that in a four-week period 14% of 11 to 17-year-olds saw suicide or self-harm content, 23% saw content promoting eating disorders and 61% saw bullying content, most often through their personalised feeds.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)Liberal Democrat
For a long time, big tech companies in silicon valley and China have dictated what it is like for children to grow up in the UK. On self-harm, chatbots are often integrated into social media, and some of them give unregulated medical advice. Sometimes, people with eating disorders learn about low-calorie diets or how to access weight-loss drugs. Does the hon. and learned Member agree that any regulation on social media companies must include chatbots, whether they are integrated into social media or stand-alone?
I agree. There is a plethora of sources of harm on the internet, and such chatbots are one example. Another example that somebody was telling me about is suicide forums, which encourage all sorts of awful views and behaviours. It is perhaps not directly part of this debate, but the Government having the ability to stop that stuff, in addition to the social media debate, is absolutely key. As I understand it, more powers may be needed to go that far, but I agree that it is necessary. Tragically, we cannot even rely on the companies’ own numbers. Ofcom stated in its report that its exposure data “only account for content detected by service providers.” In other words, the companies count what they catch and do not count what they miss. Content that Parliament regards as harmful might not even be prohibited under the companies’ own rules. Ofcom says that the data are “indicative rather than direct measures.” None of that proves that a safe platform is impossible, but it does show that complying with today’s rules is no certificate of safety. Given the scale of harm we are seeing, it is clear that we should be applying the precautionary principle. It is right that the Government impose a circuit-breaker ban now, as they have promised to do. In the meantime, they are right to be working on a system for deciding how platforms can earn the right to serve under-16s by showing that they are safe, including by removing addictive and harmful features. Some say that Ofcom does not have the capability to police whether sites are safe in practice. In February 2025, I led a debate in this Chamber in which I called for a social media ban, and I asked why we cannot simply reverse the burden, so that it is not for the regulator to prove that an app is harmful, but for the company to prove that it is safe. I think that is the right question to ask; I believe that the Government agree, but I would welcome the Minister’s confirmation that that is the way they are looking at it. An off-ramp can only ever be acceptable if the burden genuinely shifts. Then, if there is incomplete data or uncertainty about safety, that must mean that there is no exemption, and not another long investigation while children remain exposed. Assuming that companies can demonstrate that they are safe, I have five questions for the Minister about this potential off-ramp. First, what exactly must a company show on harmful content—including what it misses—on contact from strangers, on addictive design and on risks to the most vulnerable children to demonstrate that its platform is safe? Secondly, who checks that evidence independently, with access to the real product rather than just the company’s own statistics? Thirdly, will the regulations expressly state that insufficient evidence means no exemption, rather than the regulator being required to prove everything, as it currently has to do, which is very difficult when it comes up against a well-resourced social media company? Fourthly, will major changes to an app or algorithm trigger a reassessment? If new evidence of harm emerges, how quickly can an exemption be suspended or withdrawn? The Molly Rose Foundation says that exemptions must be hard-earned, with stretching demands in order to keep them, and requirements reviewed and updated annually. Finally, will Ofcom have the powers, expertise and resources to access the data needed to administer the system? The young people who signed the petition are right to put freedom—the freedom to express themselves and to find their community—at the heart of this debate, but that must also mean freedom from harassment, from content that damages their wellbeing and from design that makes it harder for them to put their phone down and spend time on other things that they themselves value. Those freedoms matter as well. I recognise that restrictions will limit choices. That is why the aim must be not permanent exclusion, but requiring companies to offer something that is better and—most importantly—safe. Young people should not have to choose between connection and safety, and companies should earn the right to serve them by respecting both.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)Independent
Meur ras, Sir Roger. It is an honour to serve again under your chairship. I thank the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for securing the debate, and the 416 constituents in Camborne, Redruth and Hayle who signed the petition. I want to start with a line from Ofcom’s report on children’s exposure to harmful content online, which was published just 11 days ago: “Children’s…exposure to eating disorder content on user-to-user services did not change significantly over the first nine months after the children’s safety duties in the Act”— the Online Safety Act— “came into force in July 2025.” That is damning. The status quo fails outright to protect children from harmful eating disorder content pushed by recommender algorithms. I will focus on eating disorders, not because they are the be-all and end-all of the debate on banning social media, but because they are emblematic of where we have not been bold enough. Across the country, many children and their parents must grapple with the issue of eating disorders, and it is one of the key reasons why I became an MP. I do not wish the experience of my family on any other, which is why reading Ofcom’s comments compelled me to speak today. Pro-eating disorder content can be found far and wide across social media. Terms such as “thinspo”, “looksmaxxing” and “ana”—short for anorexia—are used across social media to evade moderation. To all intents and purposes, algorithms shamelessly push them to vulnerable children’s feeds all the same. A meta-review of 50 studies involving 10 to 24-year-olds found consistent links between social media usage and eating disorders. Among those with eating disorders, 97% said that social media hindered rather than supported their recovery. Although it is often girls whose algorithms push eating disorder content, it is increasingly true for boys too. A February report by the Children’s Commissioner for England found that through short-form social media content, children are routinely exposed not only to prescription weight loss drugs, as the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) mentioned, but to steroids, through both organic content and influencer marketing. Returning to my central point, the current approach fails to regulate the algorithms sufficiently to protect children from harmful eating disorder content. A social media ban for under-16s is blunt, and no age-verification system is perfect, but it is the proposal before us and it goes some way to matching the scale of the harm being done. When an industry’s business model depends on capturing children’s attention, we cannot keep asking children and parents to carry all the risk; the burden must fall on the platforms. We must act now to prevent our most vulnerable children from being exploited to their immense harm.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. The petition calls for the Government to rethink their ban on social media for under-16s. I want to set out why I agree with the aims of the petition and substantially with the 457 of my constituents who signed it. I recognise that the Government’s policy was brought in with the best of intentions, but I have serious concerns that it will not be workable and that it will take away a lot of value. I am glad that Parliament has spent a lot of time recently debating the harms caused by poorly regulated social media. Urgent action is needed but, in looking at the current state of the online world, we have lost sight of what social media could and should be. I will, and do, strongly criticise how tech companies have increasingly sought to make social media addictive, and have turned a blind eye to horrific exploitation and abuse online, as well as to deeply harmful content along the lines of what my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) just mentioned. We must force them to act in those areas, but their failure to do so to date must not lead us to conclude that social media itself is an unfixable problem, when it can bring positives to people’s lives.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)Labour
When the Education Committee looked at online harms, we had every major social media corporation before us. They did not recognise our characterisation of their features as inherently addictive. Does my hon. Friend agree that, with that kind of denial going on, we have very few options available other than to ensure that corporations’ access to our children is restricted? That is how we should look at it, rather than as restricting children’s access to social media.
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that social media companies having denied a lot of the problems and treated this as a non-serious issue is deeply wrong and alarming. I hope he will agree with some of my proposals for how we may look at that. The petition emphasises the community and connection that social media currently offers young people. I have personal experience of that. I have spoken about this in debates before, but when I was about 13, I realised that my sexuality was not like that of those around me; I was not straight. But living in a rural area and growing up in quite a homophobic, close-knit religious community, I had few people to talk to about that. Social media was such a valuable tool for me to be able to connect with other LGBT people in similar situations. Had I not had it, I would have been far more alienated and alone, and lacking peer support. I fear that a blanket ban on social media could risk making that a reality for many and I cannot support that—not after the lifeline that online conversation gave me when I was growing up. That does not just go for LGBT people. Growing up in a rural area more generally can create barriers for children, whose friends may live some distance away. If used properly, online spaces can help to widen social circles and maintain friendships made in the real world. I do not want young people to lose that because of the way tech companies are acting. Without a doubt, we need to seriously strengthen safeguards. Clearly, significant work needs to be done to keep children safe online. However, a blanket ban would be clumsy and risks being completely ineffective. I worry in particular that the proposed named-platform approach would result in a constant game of whack-a-mole between children and Ofcom as the former migrate to new platforms as the old ones are made unavailable. Young people are far more digitally literate than older generations have sometimes grasped and they move faster than I believe any regulator could. Although well meaning, a blanket ban could drive children to fringe platforms that are even less well regulated, where extreme content could be even more prevalent. That is an outcome that I am sure nobody wants. Earlier this year, the NSPCC, the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, the Molly Rose Foundation and a long list of other child safety experts signed a letter to the Government warning that a blanket ban was a “blunt response”. They are united in calling instead for more accountability from the big tech companies. The NSPCC, for example, has been clear that the Government need to stop companies designing their platforms in a way that is addictive to children, and use the full force of the law to make sure that social media platforms are safe for children to use. I support a functionality-based approach: limiting certain features without creating a situation in which children—who will find a way to use social media regardless —are led on to more extreme platforms. We are seeing some of the risk with this right now in Australia, which has had a social media ban in place. According to research from the Molly Rose Foundation, 61% of Australian 12 to 15-year-olds are still accessing platforms that they are meant to be banned from. That is clear evidence, in my mind, of why platform-based bans are not the answer and why we must change course. A functionality-based approach would benefit users of all ages, frankly, by limiting the addictive and AI-generated content that has increasingly plagued the major sites in recent years. I say that because addictive content affects adults, too, and not just children. Targeting functionalities could also stop the race to the bottom when it comes to short-form content. The popularity of short-form videos exploded with TikTok a few years ago, and now pretty much every platform has a shorts feature. Even LinkedIn has experimented with one. It seems that many platforms have felt the need to introduce a shorts feature in order to remain competitive, even when it does not quite seem to fit—take YouTube, which was always designed for long-form content, or Instagram, which has increasingly promoted its Reels function over the more traditional posts feed that it was known for. I think that a lot of short-form content has exacerbated a lot of underlying problems, particularly in relation to algorithmically driven harmful content, which we need to bear in mind. However, I can certainly envisage a scenario in which several platforms would probably not really have an issue with getting rid of their shorts features —which have led to so many of the problems that we are talking about—if others did so too. That is where regulation could step in. Any regulation of social media companies needs to take into account the decisions that they are making and why they are being made, so that we can force them to do things better. On the subject of YouTube, I would like briefly to highlight the fact that it is explicitly included in the ban. I think that is particularly difficult. There are of course problems with it as a platform—I have criticised it too—but it has a lot of educational content, for example. I would argue that there is an equality angle here, because although that is valuable for anyone, removing it could be a real blow for students who are trying to improve their school grades but do not have the funds to pay for private tutors. It is a real possibility that this type of ban could create significant inequalities in access to resources.
I agree with an awful lot of what my hon. Friend is saying, but is one of the problems not that we need to recognise that young people are not a single homogeneous group, and that what is good for one is not good for another? That is what the Government are wrestling with, and I have huge sympathy for what they are trying to do. While we are hearing young people’s voices, one thing that is closer to a homogeneous group is parents, who want the best for their kids. We have to try to grapple with this issue and find a way through that works. Does he agree that that is what we are trying to do and hopefully we will get there together?
Absolutely. I welcome my hon. Friend’s contribution, and I know that so many parents are grappling with and having a lot of trouble with this issue. We need to hear their voices and what would work for them, and support them, as well as the users that we are talking about. The enforceability of a ban is also damaged by the fact that, particularly with YouTube, a lot of viewing is done on TVs. Do the Government have any thoughts about how parents might grapple with that in a home situation, and about the enforceability of a ban in that circumstance? Ultimately, my concerns are that a blanket ban lets the big companies off the hook and will likely prove ineffective at keeping children safe. Children will still get on to online platforms, and if they are on platforms that are not well regulated, or if social media companies can argue that children are not using them when frankly they still are, they will stop focusing on child safety at all. I want to touch on online gaming, which is underdiscussed in these conversations, with many people not necessarily recognising the social features associated with those spaces. For example, Roblox is a massive online game aimed at children. It is such a hotbed for predators that vigilantes have taken to conducting paedophile sting operations in-game, as the company’s response to online abuse has been so atrocious. One such vigilante, known online as Schlep, managed to get six child predators arrested. Roblox responded by banning him and threatening legal action. So it takes no action to stop predators, but it takes strong enforcement against people who are trying to stop them. We cannot encourage vigilantism, but the priorities there are clearly so wrong. That is not the only example of abuse in online gaming. I have met the Breck Foundation, which was formed in 2014 after the tragic death of Breck Bednar—a 14-year-old boy groomed and murdered by someone he met while playing “Battlefield 3”. The groomer lied and manipulated Breck to gain his trust and lure him to his flat. The foundation goes into schools to improve the digital resilience of children across the country. It provides invaluable resources to help keep children safe, but crucially, it is not in favour of a blanket ban. In Breck’s case, removing his access to technology only drove the abuse underground, with a secret device provided by the abuser. I agree with the foundation that a ban risks narrowing a complex conversation. Indeed, online gaming is a fun hobby for many children and adults, and it can be very pro-social and support the development of creative skills. The current proposals do not ban online gaming for children, which is right; any attempt to do so would be devastating for people who enjoy it and they would inevitably end up in less regulated spaces, if mainstream platforms and games were clumsily cut off to them. But the proposals also do not really tackle the issues in the online gaming space, and I would like to see more recognition of what we need to do in that area. The Breck Foundation, like other safeguarding organisations, has called for greater accountability from big tech companies. That is where we need to be. A blanket ban will not work; it would allow predators to ruin it for everyone else and essentially let them win. We need to protect the benefits that social media and online gaming can offer young people while ensuring that the companies behind them take safety and security far more seriously. As the youngest MP, I know more than most how interwoven the online world is with growing up. We need to regulate those spaces, not hope they will magically go away—they will not.
Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)Labour
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.
Josh Dean (Hertford and Stortford) (Lab)Labour
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the chair this afternoon, Sir Roger. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for his opening speech and the petitioners for bringing this important issue forward. There are a range of views on this debate, and it is so important that we listen to the young people who want us to look in detail at what the impact might be on them. It is absolutely right that we look at the concerns raised by all the young people, adults, teachers, parents and families on the impact of social media on children’s wellbeing, mental health and development. It is important that we recognise that they are genuine concerns shared by many. I was rather looking forward to saying that I am the youngest Member in the room, but that claim has been stolen by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling). However, I am one of the few MPs who grew up with social media. Like many of my friends, I accessed social media before the age of 13. I have seen at first hand how rapidly evolving platforms have given rise to harmful content, misinformation and addiction, affecting adults as well as young people. The vast majority of colleagues in this place can remember a time before social media. Today’s generation of young people have not had that benefit. They have grown up with it, with their lives intertwined with the digital world. Parents, teachers and young people have every right to be angry. When children are exposed to harmful content, online bullying, unrealistic expectations, addictive platform design and material that damages their mental health, it is no wonder that people feel we have not acted quickly enough in this place. I remember being a young person at school desperate for the Government to do more, and they did not. Parents are right to demand action. Parliament has a responsibility to respond. The question is not about whether we should act—of course we should. It is about what will be most effective, and it is so important that we get this right. Earlier this year, I held a series of roundtables with secondary school pupils across Hertford and Stortford to hear directly from them about their experiences online. Many described social media as a source of anxiety. Others spoke about exposure to graphic content and misinformation—online pressures that previous generations simply did not have to navigate. The conversations I had with young people also highlighted that social media is not simply a straightforward source of risk. It can be a vital source of information, connection and support. Indeed, I first became politically engaged through the online world because, after the referendum in 2016, I was encouraged to join a protest to lower the voting age to 16, and I stood outside here with other young people calling for the voting age to be lowered. I would not have been there, and I would not be here had I not come across that through the online world. Many of the young people I spoke to shared similar experiences and stressed that, too often, this debate overlooks the positive role that social media can play. When safe and well regulated, it can help to combat isolation and foster meaningful connections, particularly for those in semi-rural communities like mine. It can provide a lifeline for young people who are LGBTQ+, neurodiverse, or living with a mental health condition, helping them to understand their identity and access peer support networks. Many of those young people will be on long waiting lists for traditional services. Those online communities provide an essential source of support in the interim, and I worry that a blanket ban could risk pulling the rug out from under those young people and removing the safety net altogether. One of the strongest messages I heard from young people was that they actually want us to do something to tackle online harms. Those young people were not white-knuckled, clinging on to their phones. They were telling us about their experience and that they want us to act. That should mean looking seriously at stronger age assurance, tougher regulation of harmful content, greater transparency around algorithms, meaningful parental controls and restrictions on deliberately addictive features. What it should mean is that we take the fight to the social media companies. I am, as of recently, 27 years old, and I have been waiting for this for a long time; young people today should not have to wait as long as I have. I am cautious about the idea of a blanket ban. It is important that, whatever we do, we get it right. We must ask ourselves what happens next. If mainstream platforms become unavailable, how confident are we that young people will simply stop using online services altogether? Do we risk pushing them towards smaller, less-regulated platforms, where safeguards are weaker and oversight is more difficult? We should recognise the role that those platforms now play in civic and democratic engagement. For many young people, social media is a gateway to current affairs, public debate and political participation. This is about not just learning about politics from the online world, but engaging with it from the online world and holding politicians like us to account. While protecting children from harm, which I absolutely agree must be the priority, we need to be careful not to close off legitimate opportunities for engagement.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the current proposals to have a hard cliff edge at 16 create a problem in terms of people suddenly being exposed to all of that world, having not really had the opportunity to develop the skills to be able to deal with it?
I quite agree. Another colleague touched on the cliff edge: the idea that the day someone turns 16, they might get access to social media for the first time and then head off to the polling station to vote. It is right that we have more education on media literacy in schools but hands-on, practical experience in a safe and regulated online space is important as well. We have to consider how restricting young people’s access to this source of information might affect their long-term democratic participation. If we are serious about encouraging the next generation to take part in our democracy, we have to bring young people with us on this journey, not exclude them from it. I commend the Government on their engagement with young people, parents, teachers and families across the country. Young people I spoke to were very pleased that their MP came to speak to them and hear their views, but the feedback from young people since the announcement has been less positive. It is so important that we bring them with us as we do this. During the pandemic, we pushed more of young people’s lives online. They had no say. Education, social interaction, public services and democratic engagement increasingly moved into digital spaces. Many young people developed the habits of accessing news, discussing current affairs and engaging with campaigns through the very platforms we are now debating. We cannot rip them back out without giving them a proper say again. Protecting children from harm must be our priority, but I worry that if the answer is simply to ban access, we risk alienating the generation we seek to protect. They will not forgive us if we get this wrong, nor will their parents. If we shut them out of conversations, information and opportunities for participation that increasingly shape modern civic life, we should not be surprised if they choose not to engage going forward. The challenge before us is not simply to restrict access to a list of platforms, but to create an online environment in which young people can participate safely, responsibly and confidently as future citizens. Yes, we should act. Parents are right to expect action. Young people themselves are asking for action. But let us focus on the features, the business models and the failures of regulation that are causing harm rather than assuming that a blanket ban is the only solution available and putting the pressure of companies’ failures on the shoulders of young people. Will the Minister update the House on how the Department is assessing evidence from countries, such as Australia, that have pursued a social media ban for young people? Will he confirm that restrictions will be regularly reviewed and remain adaptable, given the current pace of technological change?
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)Conservative
Ms Darlington has indicated to me that she needs to speak and then leave. The Front Benchers may wish to know that, exceptionally, I have given her leave to do so.
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)Labour
I appreciate your helping me not to be in trouble with my Whips, Sir Roger. I want to start by saying that everyone in this room and in this place wants to protect children. We have different ways of getting there—some of us support the ban, some of us do not—but never be in any doubt that we recognise that there are problems and are debating the best solution. Do bans work? Well, let us follow the evidence. Hon. Members will not be surprised that, as a member of the Science and Technology Committee, I will look at the evidence for what has already worked and what is happening at the cutting edge of science right the way through. Bans do not work everywhere that they have been tried; in fact, the bad activity just moves. But the bans are designed by people who, like the majority of people here, other than my younger hon. Friends the Members for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) and for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling), are Gen X or baby boomers—I am not trying to be rude Our experience and understanding of social media is very different from our children’s. They do not see Facebook as social media because they do not care about Facebook. We could ban it all we want and they would be like, “I’ve never been on it in my life, nor do I ever intend to.” They understand that there is no difference between social media and other platforms because everything is now social media: every gaming platform, every chatroom and everything that we now see. Let us look at what actually matters and what is actually happening. I do not think it is part of the conversation: we hear a lot about TikTok, Instagram and Facebook because we know about those platforms, not because that is necessarily where children are getting harmed the most. I did a survey of more than 500 young people in Milton Keynes and, given that the number of signatories from Milton Keynes Central is 503, I think they all signed the petition and found three more signatories. They were clear about where they are spending time, where they have problems, where they see material that is not all right, and where they are approached by strangers. That is happening on the platforms that we do not talk about. YouTube has amazing educational content, but it is also one of the places of most harm. Roblox is a lot of fun for gaming but that platform, although it is advertised to children, is actually one of the worst. I do not know if any hon. Members know about “the Com” and “764”, which are groups on Roblox and Discord that recruit primarily vulnerable people. They get those people to video themselves while they are self-harming and have watch parties as they self-harm each other. If we do not include Roblox, Discord and 764, we are not protecting children. In the UK, child sexual abuse images are overwhelmingly shared and distributed via WhatsApp. The radicalisation and co-ordination for things such as the riots that we sometimes see on our streets is overwhelmingly happening on Telegram and Signal. We are not talking about those places. In fact, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire said, it is a whack-a-mole approach if we write a list and then have to add platform names to it. In Australia, they would have to add LinkedIn to it because that is where people under 16 will now participate in the same kind of activity as they were before. We have taken important action. We have banned the taking of child sexual abuse pictures and videos at device level. That is really important. Let us look at what else could work and what the evidence tells us. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) used the example of toys. She is right that we do not want toys or products that harm, but we do not ban the toy, we ban the thing that is wrong with it. Train sets used lead paint: we did not ban all train sets, we banned those with lead paint on them. We need to make it safe. That is why exemptions are so important: we need a route back because that will create behaviour change. We need safe places for children to learn, to play and to explore, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury said. Quite famously, I have published a nine-point plan, which I have shared quite extensively and spoken to industry about. Although it is not the be all and end all, it shows how we can create a path back if platforms meet its nine requirements. First, there should be no stranger contact: it should not be possible to contact a young person and take them on to another platform. That is not to say there are not important areas for which we could have mediated places that are safe for young people to explore sexuality and other things, but strangers should not be able to deliberately target young people on platforms. There should be no algorithm feed for under-12s. They should be using their executive function to choose what they want to watch next, not seeing what the algorithm thinks they should see. There should be only a limited algorithm feed for those aged 12 to 18. That is already happening on some platforms. In fact, some young people said to me, “I just turned 18 and I want to go back to my limited algorithm feed; I don’t like the feed I am on now.” There should be time limits by age. The inquiry of the Science and Technology Committee into digital childhoods found that time limits and age-related curfews would be the most important changes we could make. The biggest impact on mental health from social media comes from children having it in their bedrooms: they are not sleeping the hours that they should be sleeping. Curfews at device-level could save children from fear of missing out—or FOMO, as they like to call it—and let them get to sleep. The second biggest impact on young people’s mental health is from age-inappropriate material. My hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) spoke about horrific stuff with eating disorders. We must be clearer that that has real consequences. We have yet to see Ofcom use all its powers in that area. I would like to empower parents and young people by having British Board of Film Classification ratings on material so that parents are clear whether it is appropriate for their child. In addition, we have not even talked about the online advertising guidelines. Are the adverts popping up in YouTube Kids videos appropriate for children? Nobody is looking at that. The adverts that pop up in their little apps or games—“Melo’s cat cafe”, or whatever they are playing—again, are not being properly regulated, although we have rules that tell us what is age-appropriate advertising. We should also have device-level age checks. Age checks are always difficult, but doing them at device level, and being clear that, when a parent passes their device down, they should clear it and set it with the proper age, is more secure than any of the things that we have talked about when it comes to children using fake identities to get on to sites. I do not want to talk about other people’s childhoods, but I may have used a fake ID in the past to buy a beer— [ Interruption. ] I know—shocking! The same thing is happening online. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury brought up a really important point about AI companion chatbots. This is not all right. If people do not have to pay for these homework chatbots, companion chatbots or romantic chatbots—if they do not have to pay for the product—they are the product. We have very strict rules from the Information Commissioner’s Office on data protection for children, but I have yet to see the ICO take proper action on this. Our children’s data is being fed in. The grooming and sexual behaviour is not an end in and of itself; the aim is to keep the children online to mine their data. That should be stopped right away. I thank everybody for coming to the debate, and the 503 people in Milton Keynes who signed the petition. By working together, and working with young people and parents, we can get to a solution that provides the benefits of an online childhood without all the problems that we see today.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)Labour
Sir Roger, you will not be surprised to hear that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for the way in which he introduced the debate. I want to start with a couple of anecdotes. Over the weekend, a mum messaged me to say that her daughter was getting bullied at school. She lives in Currie in my constituency. I do not know the details yet—I asked her to email me them—but I can almost guarantee that social media will be involved in some shape or form, because so far, every bullying case that we have dealt with in my office has had a link to social media in some way. A couple of Sundays ago, I was at St Mungo’s church in Balerno, and a mum was talking to me about her kids and their use of phones. It was a time to reflect, because we have come a long way since the 2024 election. Kids starting any state school in Edinburgh next year will not have access to their mobile phones in school—hopefully, by that time, they will not have social media on their phones anyway. However, we have to accept that it has been a bumpy ride getting this far; there have been a few steps forward and an occasional step backwards. None the less, all progress is progress. In the time since I was elected, I have spoken to many, many people in my constituency. The vast majority of them were parents, but those parents included GPs, teachers and, in one case, a paediatrician. They all agreed that they were concerned about the harm caused both by smartphones in school and the use of social media. We have had around 600 emails from people, the vast majority supporting some sort of ban. I have also spoken to young people in schools, at Scout meetings and so on, about a ban. All that led me to support a ban in full—the fullest possible ban, actually. However, I then met the NSPCC, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation and the Molly Rose Foundation, and they were very clear about some of the cliff-edge aspects, which other hon. Members have spoken about. I must say that on the day the announcement was made that we were proceeding with a ban, I felt uncertain because of those conversations with the NSPCC and others about what a ban would mean. It was only once I saw that they were supporting it, at least tentatively, that I felt able to support it that day. I welcome the Brianna Ghey Legacy Project also supporting a ban, and I thank Brianna’s fantastic mum, Esther, for all the work she is doing. I acknowledge the many good points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) on some of the impacts that a ban could have, but there are also more trivial impacts, such as those in Scotland. For example, the Scottish Government understand what young people are thinking by collecting data online via an organisation called Young Scot—everybody in Scotland knows about that organisation—but it will now be much harder to do so without having access to people on social media for that perfectly legitimate reason. I want to recognise that any ban must only be part of a much broader effort to ensure that young people are as safe as possible online. We know that bans are already in place overseas, but they are not perfect. No matter what restrictions the Government put in place, some children will continue to use restricted platforms, while some services will inevitably fall outside the scope of any ban. Of course, exactly the same arguments were made when the Government put an age limit on accessing pornography and other harmful content online, but we all agreed that putting friction between young people and pornographic websites was entirely legitimate. While I have reservations about this ban and whether it should be complete, I accept that any friction between young people and harmful social media content is a good thing.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)Labour
My hon. Friend makes a legitimate point about the issues that were raised with restrictions on pornography. However, does he accept that the difference there was that we were trying to age-verify someone who was over 18 so that they could access pornography, and there was ID available? I grappled with the challenges of age verification some 20 years ago in the mobile sector. Does he agree that we need to have confidence in this? I do not think we are quite there yet when it comes to age-verifying 16-year-olds, who do not have ID.
Like so many problems in the world, the solution can be found in Scotland. Young people in Scotland can use a Young Scot card to verify that they are 16, but I understand my hon. Friend’s point. It is critical that, alongside robust age-assurance measures, online platforms be required to be as safe as possible for all users, both young people and adults. A ban cannot be used as an excuse by companies not to comply with their responsibilities, and important questions remain about the scope of the ban and the regulation of high-risk features. In July, I welcomed the Government’s further commitment to require infinite scrolling features to be switched off by default. However, there is more work to be done on location-sharing features for under-16s, as well as further regulation of AI chatbots. I accept and understand the point that for some people, such as those who are struggling with mental health problems, health problems or perhaps their sexuality, going to social media may be a source of really good information. However, I am also concerned that young people who go to social media for advice on those really sensitive issues might end up interacting with people whose motivations are not good, and I think we have to be very mindful of that.
Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)Labour
Does my hon. Friend agree that if we think about the online world in the same way as the real world, it is a ludicrous idea that we would deliberately send children to go and interact with strangers—probably adults—in an unsupervised and unregulated environment where we would have no idea what kind of conversations were happening, and that no parent or politician would ever endorse that?
I absolutely agree. Of course, the vast majority of people who go online to seek help in that way do find it, but there is a small minority of often very vulnerable young people who we should all be concerned about, and we have a duty to protect them. Both the Mental Health Foundation and the NSPCC identified AI chatbots as a clear ongoing risk to child safety. I am a member of the eating disorders all-party parliamentary group, and I pay tribute to the important work that it carries out. I was therefore deeply concerned by the recent report from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, which found that ChatGPT will provide vulnerable people with restrictive diet plans or advice on how to hide eating disorders from their families within 20 minutes of a conversation starting. Tests found that simple prompts such as, “This is for a presentation,” or, “It’s help for a friend,” allowed users to circumvent the very weak barriers in place inside ChatGPT. Clearly, the Government should act on this issue. Even more concerning was the finding that little progress has been made in addressing eating disorder-related content on AI interfaces since a similar study was conducted in 2023—almost three years ago. Alongside numerous other examples, this demonstrates that online services cannot be trusted to regulate themselves. We have to ensure we can trust Ofcom to regulate in this area—we are not quite there yet. This cannot be acceptable. Advice on sustaining eating disorders, as well as advice on suicide, self-harm or other substance abuse should not be readily available to young people. To create a safer environment, the Government must continue to take action to push online and AI services into effective regulation. Self-regulation will not work. Time and again platforms have demonstrated that they will not place our children’s safety before their profit. While I welcome the proposed plan, I hope that it is not an end point but a starting point for a conversation about how best to ensure that the online world is as safe as possible for everyone who wishes to use it. I want to go back to the cliff-edge point that was made earlier. I am really concerned that when this ban goes live people will suddenly lose access to services they have relied on. It would be good to hear how the Government will manage the transition so that it is not a cliff edge but a soft entry into what will hopefully be a safer world.
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. Let us be honest: for far too long, tech companies have profited obscenely from addictive algorithms and harmful content aimed at children here in Britain. These are not British companies, but they have become absurdly powerful—probably more powerful than any Government. Generations of young people are paying the price, and we have a mental health crisis. We can all see that. This is not random; it is happening for a reason. Social media has become almost unavoidable for people growing up. They are not making a choice. As one of my colleagues said, there is no choice—they have to be on it. Young people in the UK spend an average of more than four hours a day on social media. That means that most of their free time is spent staring at a screen. We also have a mental health crisis—I think they are linked. This is fundamentally changing what life looks like, and how young people see themselves, build friendships and form opinions and world views. The consequences are apparent all around us. The incredible rise in diagnosed and undiagnosed anxiety is just startling. I had no experience of it until becoming an MP and visiting schools, where I was absolutely blown away by conversations with teachers and parents. The scale is off the charts. It is much more common among girls and people with a disability. Young people regularly describe feeling like they have no control over what they see online. Again, there is no choice here. They are being sent these things for hours and hours every day and deep into the night. In the Government’s consultation this summer, nine in 10 parents backed a social media ban for under-16s. Two thirds of young people agreed that under-16s should not be allowed to use at least some social media platforms. That is not surprising at all, given what I have seen in schools in the last couple of years. Every time I visit schools in Plymouth, teachers tell me about the impact it is having, describing levels of mental health distress unlike anything ever seen before. Students themselves tell me they want help getting off these platforms. I always ask for a show of hands: “If no one else was on this platform, would you miss it?” For most people, the answer is no—they are only on it because everyone else is on it. They do not want to be on it. I acknowledge that some would disagree with that, including around 400 of my constituents who signed this petition, but they are in the minority. We know from whistleblowers inside these social media companies that they have known for years and years that these harms were coming. It is not as though they did nothing about it; they have done something about it—they have deliberately hidden it, over and over again. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told our colleagues in the US Congress that the company’s leadership knew how to make platforms safer but refused to act, “because they have put their astronomical profits before people.” There is no reason to think that any of these companies will do anything different ever again. They are companies—they are trying to make money. We cannot put the wellbeing of our nation at the mercy of profit-making organisations, especially ones that reward addiction and exploitation. I am delighted that this year the Government announced decisive action to protect children from social media. I am extremely grateful for the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and the Minister for Artificial Intelligence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Kanishka Narayan), for getting that over the line. I am also extremely grateful to Labour colleagues who signed a letter I organised to the then Prime Minister urging him to take action. A week after that, he did indeed launch the consultation, which has now led to this decision from Government, so I thank everyone who signed that letter. Government now have to implement, and the question is how they do it. There is a duty to protect children, and I am so pleased that we are finally going to do that. There is also a duty to allow children access to the benefits of the internet and the online world. Many of my colleagues have spoken very eloquently about that today. How do we do that? A 15-year-old who wants to go on YouTube to learn French or learn the guitar should be able to do that, so there is a challenge for Government on how they do a ban. Am I suggesting that they should just trust the tech companies? No. But surely there is a world in which we are nuanced enough for Government to get a legally binding, written assurance from platforms to provide services that are not included in the ban. Surely there is a world where we are agile enough to be able to react and say, “You said you were going to do this. You have not done what you said you were going to do. You are now included in the ban,” without having to do primary legislation. I am super conscious that I grew up benefiting from YouTube. I learned the guitar on YouTube. I do not know how I would have learned it otherwise. I would have had to pay for many lessons. I do not think it is fair to tell the next generation that they cannot have those opportunities, so there is a challenge for Government. It is not as simple as just enacting this ban. It is about working out how we carry on giving access to those platforms. Those are tough conversations with big companies. On age verification, there are countless ways to verify someone’s age without handing over sensitive personal information. I know that some parts of the political agenda argue that any online regulatory action from the Government creates a privacy problem. The burden should not be on Government to do that. The burden should be on the tech companies themselves to find and implement solutions. They know all our information anyway. Those tech companies 100% know our ages. They have some of the brightest engineers in the world. Parliament and Government should set the rules, and they should comply with them.
Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)Liberal Democrat
Does the hon. Member have any examples of how the age of a child could be proved if that child had never been on social media? How would a tech company that, theoretically, would not know their information, be able to verify the child’s age without effectively using some form of digital ID by the back door?
I take the hon. Member’s point. The scale of what those companies know about us—whether we want to acknowledge that or not—really does not correspond to whether we have put our age into an online form or not. We can live in a world where we pretend they do not know that about us and our children, or we can live in the real world where they do know it, and we should just acknowledge that. It is not an invasion of privacy to acknowledge that because it has already happened. To get away from that would be a much bigger debate—not about restricting some aspects of social media for under-16s, but a much bigger conversation around the internet. I am not saying that I endorse it, but frankly that ship has sailed. I know people have concerns about the experience in Australia. Clearly, many young people are still using social media. I accept that no system is going to be perfect. Young people will find a way around restrictions. That happens with alcohol. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), who is not in her place just now, alluded to the fact that young people still drink alcohol illegally. They smoke cigarettes, do other activities like not wear a seatbelt, and they probably break the law or get around restrictions in some way. That does not mean that we should just throw bans out the window.
My hon. Friend and I clearly have different solutions in mind, but what unites the Chamber is our clear demand that these tech companies sort out what they are doing. Does he agree that their atrocious behaviour is the root cause? Until that changes, and until the Government bring in methods to make it change, we will not get any further.
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend; I guess we are just debating what those methods are. I fully agree that the cause of these issues is the technologies now being basically monopolised into four or five massive companies. This debate is about what we do to tackle that. I will address the cliff edge argument, where some folks suggest that if we stop young people having access to certain social media until they are 16, and then they suddenly have access, they will be super-vulnerable or in some way unprepared for the social media world. I do not think that makes sense, because it implies that exposure is the same thing as preparation—it is not. The brain in someone under 16 is developing and needs protecting. It is in a better place to deal with the harms once the person is 16 than when they are 14. I do not find any credibility in that argument.
We agree on the cause; it is the methods that we have different views on. I recognise my hon. Friend’s point about the development of the brain, but should the onus not be on social media companies to clean up their act across the piece, so that every 16-year-old accessing social media, and indeed everyone over 16, is free from the harms currently found there? Should the aim not be to make sure that the harms are gone, not that the under-16s are gone?
Yes, that should be the aim. It brings me on to the final point I was hoping to make. For me, this whole agenda is not purely about people under 16 years old. This is about recognising that social media is really bad for us. It is bad for me as a 34-year-old, it is bad for a 14-year-old, and it is bad for a 64-year-old. I see my parents doomscrolling and think, “That’s probably not good for you.” How do we recognise, as a society, that something is bad for us? Let us go back to the example of alcohol or cigarettes. We know they are bad for us. We let adults use them, but we do not let children. If someone is under 18, we say, “Woah, you really shouldn’t be doing that.” Once they are 18, if they decide to do something they know is bad for them, they can do it. For me, it is the same with social media, or particularly the elements of it we are looking to get after through heavily restricting use for under-16s. I think that will lead to a really important moment. Some would call it a seatbelt moment, or a cultural shift. My parents grew up in a generation where smoking was pretty accepted. At school, we were taught over and over again, “Smoking is bad for you. You shouldn’t smoke.” I went home, saw my parents smoking and said, “Mum, Dad—you shouldn’t be doing that. That’s bad for you.” It was probably quite annoying to have a 12-year-old tell them that, but the culture changes. I hope that happens with social media. For my colleagues who have spoken about their children, I hope that in a few years’ time they might find that, in the kitchen, their 12-year-old says, “You shouldn’t be scrolling. It’s bad for you. I’m not allowed to do it, because it’s bad for you, so you shouldn’t be doing it.” It could be that the culture shifts, and that is how we get after the profits of these companies and they learn that they might have to change a bit. Who knows what comes next for technology? We do not know, but for me, this is very important to get after. I am grateful to those who signed the petition, ensuring that this debate could happen. It gives the Government another chance to set out how they will help to protect our children and cause a culture shift.
Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)Labour
Thank you, Sir Roger, for being so lenient in allowing me to speak this evening; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I have supported calls for a ban on under-16s accessing social media—the volume of harmful content online makes unrestricted access a really serious concern—but I have become increasingly unconvinced that a full ban is the right answer. That is because when I speak to young people in my constituency, they do not tell me that they want to be excluded from online spaces; they want those spaces to be safer for them, with the harmful content removed, the bullying tackled, and stronger protections against exploitation and manipulation. In short, they want the platforms to be responsible. Calls for a ban are a response to the failure of social media companies to act. Had they consistently prioritised safety and wellbeing over engagement, we would not be having this debate today. However, the burden to act should not fall solely on children and parents; it should fall on the companies that build and profit from these platforms. Ofcom is working hard to tackle online harms, but it faces an uphill struggle, and I wonder whether it has the tools to manage the task. Although age-assurance measures have a role to play, they are not foolproof and young people can often circumvent restrictions through VPNs and other workarounds. The Australian experience perfectly illustrates that; despite restrictions on access there, many Australian teenagers have continued to use social media. That suggests that a ban alone is not a complete solution, and that we must also focus on having platforms that are safer by design, and on holding the companies behind them accountable. There is also an inconsistency in our wider approach. Social media and digital platforms are increasingly used in educational settings to communicate with students, share learning resources and develop digital skills. If we recognise that these technologies have benefits in education and civic life, we should be cautious about treating them as inherently harmful in every context. For the same reason, I am not convinced that blanket age verification requirements are the answer. Measures that apply to every user can create privacy concerns and barriers to access, without addressing the underlying cause of harm. We also know that platforms frequently fail to respond when problems are identified, as other hon. Members have said. Earlier this year, a constituent contacted me after repeatedly receiving content in his Facebook feed linking to pornographic websites. My office contacted Meta on his behalf several times, but we received no response. I am sure other Members have had similar experiences—it is simply not good enough. The UK has taken important steps through the Online Safety Act 2023. However, this debate highlights the limits to any one country acting alone. These issues are not specific to the UK; social media platforms operate across borders and harmful content does not respect jurisdictions. That is why international co-operation is essential. The 2024 UK-US agreement on children’s online safety was a welcome step, but it remains too focused on changing children’s behaviour, rather than on changing the platforms themselves. In contrast, the proposed EU KIDS Act places greater emphasis on platform accountability and on requiring the companies to remove addictive features, strengthen privacy protections and demonstrate that their services are safe for young people to use. I have two questions for the Minister. First, have the Government considered whether elements of the EU KIDS Act’s “safety by design” approach could inform future UK policy? Secondly, what discussions have the Government had with international partners about establishing common standards on platform design, algorithmic transparency and child safety? As a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I was struck by the recent comments from the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, who argued that efforts to restrict children’s access to social media should not distract us from the need to ensure that platforms meet clear legal duties and are properly held to account. I believe that is the right approach; rather than placing the responsibility on children and their families to avoid harm, we should require tech companies to create products that are safe by default. We can continue to debate an under-16 social media ban, but children will not truly be safe until the platforms themselves are held responsible for the harms they create. I believe that the answer lies in international co-operation, platform accountability and safety by design, and not simply in asking young people to stay away.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I thank all hon. Members in this Chamber; I found myself nodding along extensively during other Members’ contributions. I absolutely support banning children from accessing harmful social media. The Liberal Democrats have long called for decisive action in this space. The Government joined us in those calls earlier this year, announcing proposals for a social media ban, but it has been many months since the initial announcement, and we are still not entirely sure what to expect. That uncertainty over what a possible ban will look like may be driving many of the concerns of those who signed this petition. What we know so far is that the Government have plans for an Australian-style ban; not only is that vague, but the Liberal Democrats have concerns that an Australian-style ban will ultimately fail in its role to reduce the harms faced by children online. As we have heard from other hon. Members, after a few months of the Australian ban, early data suggests that it has had a limited impact on prohibiting young people from accessing social media. On top of that, the Molly Rose Foundation found that among children aged 12 to 15 who had social media accounts before the ban came in, more than half said that the ban had made no difference to their online safety. I would add that, while my children are too old to be affected by the ban, I was often a very busy and tired single mother while they were being raised and using social media, and I totally understand the points being made about the possible unfairness and social justice issues with a blanket ban. This is important because, as we know, the message of this petition is not that children should keep access to harmful content; it is that a ban could cut young people off from safe spaces. For vulnerable children, online communities can often be a lifeline. A blanket ban risks cutting children off from that support. If the Australian evidence is anything to go by, the Government’s proposals could take away those positives without making the online world any safer. A few weeks ago, I met pupils from a local primary school, Peasedown St John, here in Parliament, and they shared similar concerns. In the Q&A session with a class of six and seven-year-olds, the first question was: “Are you going to ban social media?” When I asked what they thought, they told me, in six and seven-year-old terms, that they wanted inappropriate content restricted, but that they still wanted to use educational platforms. Even at that age, they recognise that different platforms carry different levels of harm, and I must admit that I agree with them. This is exactly the nuanced approach the Liberal Democrats have been calling for. Unlike an Australia-style ban, the Liberal Democrats would assess and regulate platforms based on the harms they cause, with film-style age ratings reflecting that harm. Platforms that cause the most harm would be closed to children—but, if a tech company did the work to redesign the platform, removing addictive algorithms and harmful content, that form of social media could possibly be accessible. Unlike a fixed ban, that would give tech companies a reason to change. It would preserve safe spaces for young people to talk online and make safety part of the design of these platforms rather than an afterthought. While we are considering safe spaces, I appreciated the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) that there has been a deterioration in alternative spaces—practical, real-life spaces—for young people to go to over the past 10 or 20 years. I notice that the excellent campaign group Make Space for Girls has been making the point that specifically for young women and girls—particularly as the nights draw in—it is unclear where they will be going to spend their time. The hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) also made the point that rural communities particularly face this challenge. As someone who represents a semi-rural community, I know that many young people simply do not have anywhere to go if they are not going to be on their phones. I am not saying that that makes it right that they are on their phones, but it poses a challenge when that phone use is suddenly cut off. The Liberal Democrats are also clear that protecting children online should not come at the expense of privacy. Several constituents have asked me to attend this debate; again, they are not in favour of children accessing harmful content, but their concern is that a ban may effectively require a form of digital ID to be enforceable. The Liberal Democrats have always criticised plans for mandatory digital ID, and we will properly scrutinise any regulation of social media to make sure both that it is effective and that it safeguards personal privacy. I am wholeheartedly in support of a ban on harmful social media, but I think that this debate has allowed us to raise important questions about what a ban should look like. I will therefore finish with a few questions for the Minister. Do the Government believe that the best way forward is still a harms-based approach to banning social media? Can we still expect to see a ban by spring 2027? If so, could the Minister lay out exactly what we can expect to see, and confirm that any regulation will always prioritise privacy and that the House will have the opportunity to scrutinise any proposals?
Surely any legislation should prioritise the safety of children rather than privacy?
The hon. Member is absolutely right—that was poorly worded. I should have said, “Alongside the safety of children, we should be prioritising privacy.” I thank him for allowing me to make that clarification. Finally, on 8 September, the Government also announced legislation to enforce device and app-level restrictions to stop children taking and sharing nude photos of themselves. Could the Minister tell us when we will see that come into force? The Liberal Democrats want to protect young people from online harm. We believe that the only way to do that successfully is through a harms-based ban on social media. I hope that the Government will today agree.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)Conservative
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this important debate, and I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on the way he introduced it and spoke up for those who signed the petition. I have some sympathy for the position that Leo and the other signatories set out opposing restrictions on social media for under-16s. When the debate on this issue began, I was initially sceptical that increasing the age limit was the appropriate response; there are many good uses of tech for young people that they should be free to explore. However, the wider debate has been running for some considerable time. Nearly 20 years have passed since I was working for T-Mobile on the Byron review, which looked at online child safety. The focus then was on platforms taking responsibility for protecting young people. Sadly, they have failed to do that. On balance, therefore, I agree that the evidence and experience demonstrate that increasing the age limit is necessary to protect children from harm. We know that social media platforms and the algorithms driving them are designed to be addictive. They can expose children to pornography, violence, bullying, sexual abuse and other extreme content, with damaging and, very sadly, tragic consequences. The Conservatives believe that parents have ultimate responsibility for their children, but we also acknowledge the challenge they face in keeping their children safe online. The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) set out this point clearly: an activity that would not be tolerated in the real world has been normalised, monetised and amplified online. That is why the shadow Education Secretary, as well as my noble Friend Lord Nash and many hon. Members from across the House campaigned to secure restrictions on platforms, working with parents and bereaved families. I welcome the announcement the Government made in June to bring forward restrictions on platforms that will protect children and help parents. However, a theme throughout the debate has been that the success of the policy will depend on its implementation. In that context, I was concerned by Ofcom’s recent report on the Online Safety Act, which found no statistically significant reduction in the proportion of children encountering harmful online content during the first nine months after the new child safety duties took effect. That is clearly disappointing and worrying. Laws need to be implemented effectively. The Government have said they intend to publish the first set of regulations for the age limit before the end of this year, to take effect in the spring. Can the Minister confirm that that timetable remains the same? If it is, when will the regulations be published, given we are now in November? We should, as others have said, learn from Australia’s restrictions and where they have been bypassed. Last week, Ofcom published its review of age-verification tools and recommended four methods: photo ID, digital ID, face-age estimation technology, and banking-based checks. Supporting child protection does not mean endorsing any age-checking system or the unnecessary collection of personal data, so that review raises a number of questions that I want to put to the Minister. First, does the Minister agree that, as far as possible, information held by platforms should be used in the first instance for adults? How will they keep to a minimum the requirement to provide photo ID and use face-scanning technology as much as possible? Clearly, there are privacy issues at hand here, so what protections should be in place for users’ data? For the avoidance of doubt, will he rule out mandatory digital ID as a requirement for accessing social media? In that report, Ofcom estimates that around 150,000 16 and 17-year-olds across the UK hold neither a passport nor a provisional driving licence. How will the Government inform those young people of options such as a citizen card, which they can get for free? Is the Minister looking at age verification at app store level as a means not only of more reliable protection of children, but of reducing friction for adults accessing social media? Of course, we have to accept that no system is foolproof, but that does not mean that we should take no action. Having effective controls and penalties, which the chief executive of Ofcom spoke about in media interviews last week, will reduce the likelihood of under-16s being exposed to damaging content, which is our objective. Finally, in September, the Secretary of State made a statement regarding nude images and said that due to the lack of progress on voluntary measures, legislation would be introduced to “strengthen device-level protections” to prevent “children from taking, sharing or viewing nude images on phones and tablets.” —[ Official Report , 8 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 917.] What progress has there been in the last two months to prepare that legislation, or indeed secure commitments from major tech companies to develop and implement such protections to stop children being abused and groomed? Our role as legislators is to ensure that the laws we pass are necessary, effective and proportionate. Protecting children from harm is a duty that all Members take incredibly seriously wherever they fall on this specific issue. The public consultation and the conversations that I have had show that there is support for action to introduce effective age-based access to social media as part of wider measures to protect children. Now the focus must be on getting the implementation right.
The Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Online Safety (Ian Murray)Labour
It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse. It has been a superb debate. I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on introducing this e-petition debate. It has been a very thoughtful debate, and rightly so, because questions about children, social media and online safety go right to the heart of family life in this country. I have two young girls aged six and one. Although they are not yet at the stage of social media and telephones, the daily fight to get them off screens at that age requires the diplomatic skills of the UN, because screens are everywhere. As parents we probably set the worst examples. Our whole lives are on our phones now, whether we are at work or trying to do family admin. We all live in a digital age where we are more connected than ever before. Being online can bring huge benefits, from making new connections to learning new skills. I pay great tribute to Leo and his colleagues for setting up this petition and getting the issues brought into the public domain, while we highlight the trade-offs that the Government have to make to keep children safe. I want to be absolutely clear from the start that children are at risk of real harm online. Those risks have been present for some time, and successive Governments have failed to regulate to keep children safe online. As the Secretary of State has made clear, our ambition is not simply to make the online world safer, but to enable and empower children and young people to use it safely. That requires an active Government who are prepared to step in when children are being harmed, but also to step in to give children alternative uses for both the online and offline world. We are not starting from scratch. The Online Safety Act introduces one of the most robust systems globally for protecting children from harm online. It is important to state that the Act is not perfect, but everything that we do beyond this builds on the Act. It is one of the most robust pieces of legislation globally to try to protect children from harm. I take on board the criticisms and points made by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) and other Members about the Ofcom analysis, which showed that over the first nine months it had not seen a major reduction in online harms among children. None the less, we can prove the counterfactual that there has not been a massive increase, so perhaps the Online Safety Act is working to the extent of not increasing the harms. However, we want to get the harms to the lowest possible level. We have to be honest: we will never deal with 100% of harms. What we are trying to do with the Online Safety Act and all the regulations on top of that—the under-16 social media ban, features and functionalities bans, and AI chatbot restrictions—is layer on as much as we possibly can to increase the number of harms we can take out of the system. We will never get to 100%, though, and we have to be honest about that. The Online Safety Act’s child safety duties came into effect in July 2025, requiring platforms to prevent children from encountering pornography, self-harm material and suicide and eating disorders content. Providers must also protect children from other types of harmful content such as violent content and bullying and abusive content. But we always knew we had to do much more. That is why earlier this year we launched the “Growing up in the online world” consultation to hear directly from parents, experts, stakeholders and, more important, young people themselves. The wider public also had to be involved in deciding how we can make the online world safer and more enriching for our young people. The consultation received more than 116,000 responses. Nine in 10 parents who responded told us they support a ban on social media for their children. The analysis showed they were screaming out for help, to go to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith). Although what we heard from young people themselves was more nuanced, two thirds of children who responded to the consultation told us that they would support age restrictions for under-16s on at least some social media. Ofcom’s latest research found that almost three quarters of children aged 11 to 17 had seen or heard potentially harmful content online in a four-week period, including six in 10 who encountered bullying and five in 10 who encountered hate content directly. We believe that social media services create unique risks for children, and while many of them have made welcome changes, they have not gone far or fast enough to keep our children safe. We think that the responsible thing to do is ban social media companies from offering services to children under 16, but it does not stop there. This is not about stopping children from going online altogether; it is about making sure that the services they use are safe and suitable. To make these changes work, companies will be required to use highly effective age assurance that is backed by Ofcom’s robust enforcement powers.
I appreciate the Minister’s tone and the different considerations he is bringing in, but does he agree that it is very difficult to define social media? We have a definition in the traditional sense, but there are social platforms now that operate primarily on an anonymous basis instead of having identities behind them, and there are online gaming platforms and so on. How do the Government propose to deal with the fact that social media is a very loose term now?
That goes to the heart of the problem, because social media is indeed a very loose term. Platforms that might have been out of scope are perhaps being brought into scope by having new functionalities that we might think are different from the social media platforms we are seeking to regulate. For example, Spotify has introduced stranger conversation functionality to its platform. Does that mean that it comes within scope? It depends how social media is defined and whether platforms are morphing into something different. For example, when Facebook was first introduced, it was a service for bringing university students together and letting them communicate with each other. It is now a worldwide content platform where anyone in the world—billions of people—can sign up for an account, interact with each other and upload their own content, which can be served through algorithms; of course, every bit of it is monetised. My hon. Friend is right that technology is moving very quickly, as is the definition of social media, and that is why the regulations have to be flexible enough to deal with some of those harms. I will return to the question of scope shortly. To answer the question asked by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk, the first regulations will be laid before Parliament before the start of the Christmas recess, with restrictions coming into effect in spring next year. While social media services pose a unique risk, there are, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) said, other services that children can access that have many of the same harmful functions. That is why we are also preventing under-16s from accessing some of the riskier features. They will not be able to livestream themselves or communicate with strangers on a wide range of services, including gaming. We call this the Australia-plus model because we are bringing in gaming, which is not included in the restrictions there. 16 and 17-year-olds will have those protections applied by default. There will be no cliff edge on the adult social media experience: when they hit 16, restrictions will be applied by default when they enter an account until they are 18. We will introduce default protections for 16 and 17-year-olds on persuasive features on social media such as autoplay and personalised feeds to support young people to manage their time online. We will also apply default overnight curfews, including muting push notifications. Many Members have mentioned the other features and functions on social media that are addictive but may not be as harmful as the really extreme harms, such as child sexual exploitation or some of the other stories we hear. There is a spectrum of harms, including the addictive nature of social media, the lack of sleep from using it and the neurological difficulties it is causing in the adolescent brain—that is why social media companies design them that way. In fact, there is a Science and Technology Committee hearing tomorrow morning on the neuroscience of childhood and how social media is affecting children. It is worth looking into these big issues, and that is why we are applying overnight curfews to try to combat the impact on sleep and attention as part of the social media defaults, including muting push notifications. These protections will sit alongside a wider package of measures including stronger safeguards around AI chatbots and measures to promote a more positive and educational experience both online and offline. We want children to enjoy the benefits of the online world but give parents the confidence that they can do that safely. We know that regulation alone is not enough. We must also help children and young people to build media literacy and critical thinking skills to navigate the online world safely and prepare them for an increasingly digital future. I have spent a lot of time in schools in my constituency talking to 11 to 15-year-olds about the social media ban. I think hon. Members are absolutely right to suggest that we do not give young people enough credit for their understanding of dangers online. They understand when there are things online that they should not be seeing. They are very much aware of bullying and of those addictive features, and we do not give them enough credit for being able to navigate this themselves. We are therefore strengthening digital resilience and media literacy through changes in the curriculum and practical support for parents and carers, while helping children and families to access high-quality online content. This is about building on the protections that we already have and going further where children need us to. The Government cannot and will not look the other way. We must move more quickly and decisively to keep people safe online, and nowhere is that responsibility more important than in protecting children from harm. Since I took on my online safety role in the reshuffle, I have spent a lot of time with grieving families. I encourage all Members of this House—Ministers, Cabinet members, Back Benchers and those who are just interested in this issue—to spend some time with the grieving families to hear directly from them how social media has impacted their family life. They have some incredibly difficult stories that are harrowing to hear, but I think all Members should hear them. The test for the Secretary of State and me is that if we get to the end of this process and find that all these regulations would not have saved their children from the harms that led to their deaths, we will have failed their children and failed to protect the children of the future from harm. That is a very high bar, but it is a bar we have to meet, because the social media companies have not. Over years, if not decades, they have consistently turned the other way, and they are starting to take action only because they realise that legislation is coming to restrict accounts for under-16s. Our job as a Government is to build an online world that is safer and more responsible, where platforms take responsibility. If we ask more of the online world, we should also offer more in the real world: stronger communities, better youth provision and more trusted adults around young people. Safety is not just about what we block; it is also about what we build, and we are determined to do that. I will run through some of the interesting and important questions that hon. Members have raised. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, who introduced the debate with a tremendous speech, talked about age-gating and the Australian example. What Australia has not done—we have been learning this from Australia—is have highly effective age verification. That is the gateway to making sure that the ban works. Many hon. Members have rightly challenged me, as the Minister responsible, on what that will look like. We are looking at this at the moment. Should it be at the app store level, as the shadow Minister said? Should it be at the device level? Should it be at the level of each individual social media platform? We are working through those issues to see what the most effective option is, but the principle for us is to ask, “What is the most effective system of age verification to ensure that under-16s are protected from social media platforms?” My hon. and learned Friend talked rightly about the risky parts of gaming. We are bringing gaming into our approach, through features and functions. We will pass the under-16s social media ban this side of the new year, and it will come into effect in the spring of next year; we will then bring forward a host of regulations on features and functions, including stranger communications, which is the biggest problem with Roblox and some of the other issues that hon. Members have raised. That will allow gamers to continue to have the functionality of stranger pairing, but without the ability to talk to strangers in a gaming context. That should resolve some of these issues. A lot of the harms are where vulnerable people are taken from the gaming environment to other platforms, in order for grooming and exploitation to continue. That is a commitment of the features and functions part of this, which overlays the social media ban. I will talk a little about isolating young people, because that is always on my mind; I know the Secretary of State thinks about it a lot as well. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire, who is the baby of the House—I was hoping to be the baby of this debate, but I have been beaten by probably everybody else in the Chamber—for telling his personal story, which is a very brave thing to do. Isolation is a concern, particularly for vulnerable communities, but from the data and information that we have, we are seeing that the most vulnerable young people are the most susceptible to being involved in these harms. The balance here is about whether we have these spaces where young, vulnerable people can seek that advice or the communities that they wish to be part of and where they can have that enrichment, or whether we protect them. On balance, protecting people is probably the best place to be, while enriching the offer that we can give young people so that they are confident that they can go to safe spaces with safe people they can talk to about their experiences. This is not an easy thing to resolve. If anyone said it was, they would not be telling the truth. Let us talk a little about the way back. Essentially, it all comes down to the scope of the social media ban. What we want to do with the ban, which we announced in June, is capture user-to-user platforms whose purpose is to enable online interaction and which allow users to post material, alongside having an algorithm. The Australian regime includes platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. We will not be naming platforms directly in the regulations. Ofcom will subsequently apply the regulations to the social media companies and then determine whether it will produce a list of the companies that are in scope. I will explain what Ofcom will do in the regulations and what the thought processes are. Social media companies that think that they are in scope and that have more than a certain number of users will have to self-notify to Ofcom as being in scope of the legislation, and then conform to the regulations. We are working through the detail of how we translate the Australian scope into the UK context, and it is really important to get this right within that. Several hon. Members talked about the regulations, about meeting the criteria and about what the off-ramp is. Essentially, the off-ramp or the way back is for platforms to prove, through their design, that they meet the regulations. It is just a case of reversing the situation. If stranger communication is banned and your online platform is subsequently not to be available to under-16s but you have that functionality, it is quite clear that you do not comply with the regulations, so the way back is to comply with the regulations and fall out of scope. That is an easy thing to say but not an easy thing to deliver, but that is the principle with which we will go forward on this. If there are services like Lego Play or—YouTube has been mentioned—YouTube Kids, are there ways in which you can stop the harms being created by the algorithms, the recommender systems, the commenting systems or the conversations that can be had with strangers? If you have created a service that complies with all the regulations, is it then available to under-16s? I would say that currently the Government’s position is that, yes, there has to be an off-ramp, and the Canada model is something that we are looking at quite closely in terms of its regulations.
Can I just clarify something? Is the off-ramp part of the features and functions piece, which is post spring, or will that be part of the ban in the regulations that will be put before Parliament before December?
Wera Hobhouse (in the Chair)Liberal Democrat
Order. Before the Minister replies, may I encourage everybody to speak through the Chair? I do not want to be too pompous about it, but the convention is that the debate goes this way, not that way. Before you start a conversation among yourselves, please remember that.
My apologies, Mrs Hobhouse.
Mine too, Mrs Hobhouse. It was such an engaging conversation that we were trying to have with each other, so I do apologise. I suppose the simple answer to the question is, “We don’t quite know yet, but probably not.” And this is the answer to the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), in terms of time. When we announced we were going forward with the ban, we had to have a legislative vehicle to put this through. The difficulty with that is this: we took the powers, in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, to put the regulations through. That means that we can do it quickly, and that is why we can make the commitment to do it this side of the end of the year. That then means that we have to make a whole body of potential legislation, in statutory instruments, in one go in December, which is not an easy feat if we want to get this right. I think the discussion about what the way back looks like will have to be a future discussion, probably alongside the features and functions part of the debate later on, after spring next year, when this is being implemented. That is not entirely settled yet, but given what we have to try to achieve by December, it is probably the only way to be able to put that in place.
I am just trying to get the sequencing right in my head. The Government are going to put regulations before Parliament before the end of the year. We all welcome that. Will it include Ofcom’s thinking about individual platforms, or do we have to wait for that? If we have to wait, when will we hear from Ofcom on that point?
Let me go through the timeline, because it is really important. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act gives us the power to make the regulations. We will make the regulations in December this year. These will come into effect in late spring, and by the time they come into effect, Ofcom will have to have done the work in terms of implementing the regulations, bringing the platforms that are in scope into scope and then starting to enforce what needs to be done. But there will have to be an implementation period after Ofcom has developed the guidance and what must be done on enforcement, so the day from which under-16s will no longer be able to access social media will be in late spring. Between December and late spring, Ofcom will develop the guidance required to implement the regulations. Throughout that process, we will be working on the features and functions, which relate to things like the stranger communications that I have already laid out. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury spoke about her own daughter and about a phone being on her Christmas list. I think the 116,000 responses to the consultation were just parents crying out for the necessary tools. The Labour party conference had many panels on online safety, and the example that was always used was alcohol licensing. Many of us will have a bottle of alcohol in the house; we know that under-18s are not allowed to drink it, but that does not stop some of them doing so. The tools cannot be foolproof, but they give parents the ability to say, “That is harmful to your health. It is harmful to children, and there are laws in place to say you can access that only when you are over the age of 18.” That gives parents the ability to draw a line in the sand, and I think a lot of them are crying out for the tools to help make those decisions. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has put a lot of thought into what is happening on offline activities at the same time. We cannot have a situation in which the online world is restricted for under-16s but there is nothing for the offline world. We have put over £500 million into the Youth Matters fund to refurbish or build 250 new facilities, as well as a £22.5 million investment over three years to support up to 400 schools to provide youth-tailored enrichment schemes. We have made a major investment in the Youth Matters national youth strategy, a 10-year plan to ensure that every young person has somewhere to go, something to do and someone who cares. I think part of having someone who cares is about the ability to open up to someone who is not a parent, which allows a young person to have some of the difficult conversations that they may have sought to have online. We heard about the nine-point plan of my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), who is no longer in her place. She has been right at the forefront in trying to see what a way back looks like and what it needs to be effective. I encourage Members to look at that nine-point plan and see the neuroscience event tomorrow that my hon. Friend will be part of as a member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. My constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), demonstrated what is in his own inbox, which is probably a demonstration of what all our inboxes looked like around the country following the consultation. He highlighted a number of civil society organisations that have very strong views on this issue, one way or the other: they either support or do not support the ban, or they may reluctantly support a ban because something needs to be done. The challenge that the Government face in developing these regulations can be seen not only from this afternoon’s debate, but from what has been said by all the civil society organisations out there. I pay tribute to them all; many of them, such as the Molly Rose Foundation, have been set up on the back of tragedy and in horrendous circumstances. There is no one solution that they are proposing, and it is therefore the Government’s responsibility to find the best way forward that keeps children safe online and has the maximum benefit. I will finish by mentioning a few more of my hon. Friends who raised some really good questions. We heard about international comparisons and the EU KIDS Act from my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles). We are basing all our evidence on international comparisons. Of course, we have the Australia model, which we talk about a lot, but the Canada model is currently being developed, and there is also the EU KIDS Act, which I was in Brussels talking about just last month. Those international comparisons will certainly affect what we think about, and the Council of Europe is right on this issue. I sat on the Council of Europe many years ago, and it will do a lot of great work in developing both the right of the child and the human right of access and protection from harm, including the protection of children from harm. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas), who is a fantastic resource on this issue, and I thank him for how he has been able to help us develop some of these regulations. Being online has huge benefits for young people, such as the ability to learn the guitar, like my hon. Friend—perhaps he should have given us a little song this afternoon to see whether his YouTube tutorials actually worked. We often get questions like that—what will people do if they want to try to learn to play the guitar? Again, I emphasise that we are not banning people from being online, and we are not banning children from being online. Logged-out features can be used. If online platforms such as YouTube want to come forward with a new or redesigned platform that complies with the regulations, and wish to test whether they could be removed from scope, it is up to them to do so. In fact, we have been crying out for platforms to do that for many years. We have ended up in this position because they have not complied or had any intent to comply. They must comply with the regulations that are put in place. I will finish with why we are doing this. I talked about the grieving families. I have a whole folder of their stories in front of me, and the harm is there for all to see. There are extreme cases of child sexual exploitation, children who have had to be taken into safeguarding because of their online experiences, or children who have died. Some of the stories are unpalatable, if we think about our own children; the Government have a responsibility to act. As the Secretary of State said in the House on introducing the under-16 ban, social media companies have not done enough to keep children safe online. The Ofcom analysis shows that they are still not doing enough. The Government have to step in. We do not want to ban people from doing things. We do not want to ban under-16s from being on social media, but that is the only way in which we can protect children from its harms. We are determined to ensure that children have an enriched experience online, and that media literacy and the education system allow them that experience, but also that they have an enriched experience offline. I think the Secretary of State describes it as giving children their childhood back, which is a really good way of putting it. Let the message today to Leo and all the petitioners be a really positive one: we hear their concerns, but we back parents, we believe in young people and we are determined to make the online world work better for them. That is the task we have to do between now and December, and it is the responsibility of not just the Government, but all Members. I re-emphasise what the Secretary of State has set as the benchmark: we have to be able to look those grieving families in the eye and say that we have done all we possibly can to make the online world a safer place, so that other people’s children do not end up like their children did. If we can achieve that, we will have achieved something not just for this generation, but for future generations as well.
I thank Leo and all the 217,682 signatories to the petition, as well as all hon. Members who spoke today. Each speaker agreed that the Government need to be tougher on social media companies and to crack down on harmful and addictive features, which we all agree that children should not be subject to. The hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) spoke powerfully about the impact of eating disorder content. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) shared nine solutions, including on algorithmic feeds and other things that should be cut out. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas) quoted numerous statistics about social media companies crowding out young people’s time and having awful impacts on them. We all agree that the status quo is not acceptable. The reality is that, today, under-16s across the country are subject to these platforms. The Ofcom report, which many Members referred to, acknowledges that children’s access to these platforms is not materially reducing. I support a ban, but with a possible off-ramp where, if social media companies can show that their products are safe, we should allow children to access them. I accept the premise of Leo’s petition, which is that young people should have access to social media if it is safe and can safely provide a place of connection, community and support. It is important that we as parliamentarians acknowledge that, and that young people do not feel that we are paternalistically telling them what they should be able to do. The reality, however, is that with these platforms in their current form, we cannot wait. We cannot allow our children to continue to be subject to those harms while we work out how to force social media companies to clean up their act. In fact, the ban will drive innovation. If those companies ultimately want to allow children to access them, the ban will drive them to find products that are safe and suitable for children. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling), and others, made the important point about regulating harms rather than platforms. I understood that the Minister ultimately agreed with that analysis.
Order. May I remind the hon. and learned Member that a winding-up speech is not a new speech? It is two minutes. If he could come to an end, that would be great.
I think we have a lot more consensus than we did at the start of the debate, and I again thank the petitioners and everyone who spoke. Let us hope that this Labour Government will deliver the change that we have all been waiting for on this issue. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered e-petition 757233 relating to the proposed ban on social media for under 16s.
Sitting adjourned.
Source: UK Parliament Hansard API. Debate ID: 5429452.