Social Media Use: Minimum Age

Dan Tomlinson Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tony Vaughan]

Every school has to comply with the Equality Act 2010. Whatever policy a school puts in place, one would have to check that what they are doing complies with the law. Those sorts of exceptions would obviously have to be looked at very carefully.

We do not have to look far to see examples of local areas that have banned smartphones in schools, such as the London borough of Barnet.

[Dan Tomlinson (Chipping Barnet) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for mentioning the action that has taken place in the London borough of Barnet, for which I have the honour of being one of the three Members of Parliament. I have been working closely with local teachers in primary schools and secondary schools and with the fantastic Smartphone Free Childhood campaign in north London, led by a wonderful volunteer called Nova. We now have 103 primary schools in the borough committed to going smartphone free from September. Every secondary school has also said that they will go from year 7 or upwards—with some going further and faster—to go smartphone free. That is not just “not seen, not heard”, but headteachers working together, so that they have safety in numbers and are backed up by their MPs, to say that, unless there are specific exemptions that apply, smartphones will not even be allowed on the premises.

Further to an earlier point, it has also been really encouraging that some teachers are going further and saying that parents should also not be allowed to use smartphones on the grounds, for the reasons that have been pointed out. I thank my hon. and learned Friend for raising Barnet. It has been fantastic to work with the campaign locally to support parents and young children in my constituency.

[Tony Vaughan]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his activism and organising on this issue. I know that he has played a big role in the outcomes that he has just described.

An example more local to my Folkestone and Hythe constituency is a policy designed by the John Wallis academy in Ashford in Kent, where students put their mobile phones in a locked pouch during the day. The principal, Mr McBeath, had intended that the rule would limit disruption in school and support safeguarding. I, for one, will be advocating for that whenever I speak to headteachers in Folkestone and Hythe. I commend the work being done by Smartphone Free Childhood nationally and by its group in Folkestone and Hythe. It is important to work closely with everyone involved to address the problems that social media use is creating for our young people.

I am conscious of all the other people who want to speak as well as the Minister, but I have a few questions for him, one of which I have raised already. Is the code of practice likely to be robust enough in the coming years, as we see more evidence of the harms caused by social media? What changes may be needed as time goes by? Is Ofcom striking the right balance between safeguarding children from harm and ensuring economic proportionality? Is there anything that Ofcom is doing or can do to tackle the small but high-risk sites I mentioned earlier, which act as online communities and encourage things like suicide? Last, what measures can the Government take to get ahead of AI development to ensure that children can be effectively protected from the risks posed by AI so that our politics can forge technical progress? That is enough from me. I look forward to hearing others’ contributions.