Children: Social Media

Lord Patel Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

As I mentioned before, we think it is incredibly important to support parents to navigate the online world and support their children’s access. I mentioned the pilot awareness campaign, which is more targeted at eight to 14 year-olds, but I believe the resources that will be available with the Department for Education are more extended. We also support Ofcom’s updated media literacy duties under the Online Safety Act. As part of that, Ofcom is delivering a three-year media literacy strategy that prioritises support for children and families.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, in the Lord Speaker’s lecture given by Dr Vivek Murthy, the former US Surgeon-General, he quoted the evidence of the mental health effect on children, particularly children using social media for over three hours per day. He said that it causes a higher degree of depression and anxiety. That is part of the evidence for why there should be better control for children using any kind of social media.

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The noble Lord cites some important evidence which, along with other evidence about the links between social media use and different cohorts of young people, young adults and so on, is very important. The Government and Ofcom are looking at that carefully. As I said before, we continue to keep open all the issues here to protect children from unsafe content, while allowing them to participate actively in the digital world, which can provide many opportunities to young people and much education.