Smartphones and Social Media: Children

Debate between George Howarth and Siobhan Baillie

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

If we needed any more evidence of how addictive and distracting smartphones are, I would encourage anyone to look around the House of Commons Chamber later. We are all grown adults working in serious business, and we know that we are on television, yet we often cannot stop fiddling and faffing with our phones—I am guilty of that as well. How the hell can we expect children to stay off their phones and concentrate in schools if that is what they are seeing all around them?

Education is vital. We spend a lot of time in this place arguing about how to do it right, and those hours and years in the classroom should not be compromised. We need to give teachers, who work so hard to qualify—it is vocational; they want to be there and to do a good job—the best chance of teaching well. As Professor Jonathan Haidt said in Policy Exchange’s excellent report, having a mobile phone at school is the equivalent of us bringing our television sets to school back in our day, along with our video cassette recorders, record players, walkie-talkies and any other communication devices or games, and sticking them on our school desks. We would not have done that, so why are we allowing it now?

I wrote about banning smartphones in schools in the Stroud News & Journal. I thank all the parents from around my district who got in touch. One father, Leo, said that despite being a millennial and working in digital marketing for his profession, he personally decided to move away from smartphones about three years ago, partly in anticipation of conversations with his kids regarding this matter. He wrote about that on LinkedIn, and he encouraged me to look at the Smartphone Free Childhood movement. I also applaud UsForThem and the many other organisations.

I think that the argument about whether we need to introduce an effective ban on smartphones in schools has been won, but the question is how we do that. It is tough for some schools, and that is why I encourage people to look at Policy Exchange’s list of recommendations, which includes schools, Ofsted and politicians, and encourages everybody to think those things through.

I was in the park this weekend with my two little ones, who are one and three. I am a proper helicopter parent— I was shepherding them around, worrying about them going up and down slides, and all those sorts of things—yet we are giving children phones to have in their pockets and bedrooms that encourage bullying, harassment, violent porn, dick pics, cyber-flashing, eating disorders, self-harm and exploitation, as many hon. Members have talked about. I spend so much time thinking about how to protect my kids from the world, yet those things are going to be very live in their little lives soon if we do not do something about this issue, and I do not think that is good enough.

One of the campaigns that I have been running for years is about tackling anonymous abuse. No matter what this place does, some children are likely to end up online and on social media even if we put the best bans and the best measures in place. Clean Up the Internet and I are trying to require tech companies to set ID verification options that allow people to follow and be followed by only real people who have been verified online. The Government have legislated for that, and tech companies know how valuable it is because they are charging people for their blue ticks, including me. I signed up to see what it does, so I am charged like 11 quid a month on Instagram just for the privilege of saying that I am who I say I am.

We have to go faster. Ofcom has a lot to do, but it is not implementing that legislation quickly enough. Real people can be caught more quickly if we have their identification. We need to put that in place and I ask the Minister to fast-forward what Ofcom is doing in that respect.

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

There is time for one last speaker, Lia Nici, but I will have to restrict her to two minutes. I will begin calling the Front-Bench spokespeople at 10.30 am.