Schools: Mobile Phones

Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for securing this debate and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, on her maiden speech.

I still remember the excitement from the day I purchased my first mobile, at the age of 10, from the Argos catalogue. Roll on just over 20 years and mobiles have very much changed. One of the biggest differences is the access to apps and sites that seek to elongate the time children spend on their devices, in order to expose them to advertising content. While restricting phones in schools seems a sensible start, I have concerns that it would simply be a temporary sticking plaster, masking the much wider problems of how younger generations interact with tech and the addictive nature of the content fed to them via algorithms, designed with the specific intent of keeping them online.

While smartphones can do wonderful things, such as teach children new languages or help their parents or guardians track their location, they also have the potential to cause isolation, anxiety and low self-esteem. Bullying no longer stops at the school gate; it continues when children are at home. Internet Matters found that 71% of children had experienced harm online. Ofcom’s Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes report in 2023 found that among three to 17-year olds, 53% were on TikTok, 46% were on Snapchat and 88% use YouTube. This has undoubtedly had a huge impact on the views and aspirations of our younger generations. A poll by Lego of children aged eight to 12 found that British and American children were nearly three times more likely to want to be YouTube influencers than astronauts when they grew up.

The influence of social media does not stop at career aspiration, with the British Association of Dermatologists recently warning of irreversible skin problems due to the growing trend of children as young as eight using anti-ageing skincare products they had seen on TikTok and YouTube. Vodafone found that, following innocent and unrelated searches, algorithms are pushing content to boys relating to misogyny and violence. If we do not break from this status quo, we will have a generation of children whose thoughts and opinions have been shaped by algorithms designed to maximise engagement, hold their attention for ever-increasing periods of time and sell advertising revenue, with the consequence of pushing more and more extreme content to them. One article I read suggested that 99% of Snapchat’s revenue is from advertising.

In South Korea, we recently saw the distressing report of an outbreak of sexually explicit deepfake content, with forums dedicated to specific schools. Here in the UK, Internet Matters found that 13% of children have experience with a nude deepfake. My Private Member’s Bill would create further offences around the non-consensual creation of sexually explicit content.

However, the problem is not just deepfakes. One woman I spoke to recalled that she was 11 years old when she first received a sexually explicit image on Snapchat. Furthermore, we have recently seen hugely distressing cases of children taking their own lives due to so-called sextortion, in which they are blackmailed with intimate images. While it is always illegal for children to share or create intimate images, we must face up to the reality that this is happening, and remove the shame and stigma so that no child feels they have no other option but to take their own life.

We must remember that there is a very simple choice here. Tech companies can provide phones and apps that are safe by design. It is becoming increasingly clear that they are choosing not to.