Online Harm: Child Protection

Debate between Julia Lopez and Claire Young

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

We think that the current priority is ensuring that under-16s are taken off harmful social media platforms, but I am sure that there is room for a market to develop, over time, that will not feature negative algorithms and activity, and that there is a world in which new products could retain the essence of positive social interaction.

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

Is the hon. Lady not concerned about the possibility that if we simply ban a list of social media platforms, we will provide an opportunity for new ones to develop and cause a problem while not allowing existing ones to develop in ways that will be less harmful?

[Julia Lopez]

I am sure that the issue of the functionality list can be explored as time goes by.

It is important to point out that this is not a moral panic but a structural problem. Today the Leader of the Opposition gathered a panel of grieving parents who had lost their children, and in that context negative online activity was recognised to have real-world and utterly tragic consequences. The children had been drawn into dangerous challenges, coercive relationships, bullying and bribery, all of which created despair in those young minds.

That showed us plainly why the pioneer phase must now come to an end, at least where children are concerned. Pioneer societies do not remain lawless forever; eventually they are retrofitted with rules and boundaries, and protections for the vulnerable. It is striking that, after years of the problem building up, countries around the world are reaching the same conclusion with remarkable synchronicity—not because it is fashionable, because Governments are copying one another or because anyone thinks that this will be particularly easy to impose and enforce, but because the evidence has accumulated to a point at which denial is no longer credible. If social media were broadly harmless for children, this would not be happening, but Governments with very different. political traditions are acknowledging the same reality: that when it comes to children, some control must be wrested back. I suspect that this trend will be reflected vividly in the Chamber today, with examples from across the nation of what is happening in the real world because of the laxity in the online world.