Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill

Monica Harding Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 7th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

I am very pleased to speak in support of the safer phones Bill. I speak as the mother of four teenagers who goes into battle nearly every day on screen time, as a governor for eight years at a local school who has seen the damage that screens can do to young people’s mental health, and as a Member of Parliament who might be able to do something to turn the tide on the damage to our young people, who are being used as guinea pigs in the rapid advance of technology. We are well into the tech revolution, which will change everything. It is a force for good but, as with previous industrial revolutions, there are victims. In the first industrial revolution the victims were the children in the factories, and today our children need protection against a tsunami of tech and its attendant harm.

The Bill, as originally intended, was a crucial step in safeguarding the wellbeing of children in our digital world, and I sincerely thank the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) for all his work to date in campaigning for safer smartphone use for children. As many Members have pointed out, the evidence before us is undeniable, and I will not rehearse what has already been said. However, I want to pull out a few facts.

A total of 2.5 million children in the UK are using social media under age, and, crucially, before they have developed the necessary skills to navigate complex and risky online environments. Extended screen time has also spiked rapidly and become the norm for most young people. I commend the report from the Education Committee, which revealed that nearly a quarter of children now use smartphones in a way that is consistent with a behavioural addiction, and in some cases screen use starts as early as six months. By the time children reach the age of 12, nearly all of them have smartphones.

Social media and mobile applications are not just tools for communication; many are inherently addictive by design, engineered to keep users engaged, whatever the cost, and I know this through my children. I echo the words of many Members today on the addictive nature and the battles that parents have. This is placing huge pressure on parents, who are in a battle with addictive algorithms that they cannot possibly win.

I wholeheartedly supported the initial provisions in the Bill, as did hundreds of my constituents in Esher and Walton who wrote to me in support of the campaign behind it. Although I continue to support the Bill, I must express disappointment that it has been significantly watered down. What could have been a bold step in child protection has been reduced to mere provisions for Government research commitments and guidance revisions—actions that do not require legislation. The Government already committed to commissioning academic research on smartphone use last autumn, partly in response to the very welcome campaigning by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington, and we already have overwhelming evidence supporting stronger regulation. How much more evidence do the Government need?

Headteachers across my constituency and parent groups in Molesey, Esher, Walton, Thames Ditton and Hersham have convened local campaigns, with nearly 1,000 signatories to parliamentary petitions on this issue, expressing huge concerns about excessive smartphone use, unregulated social media and the inadequacy of current regulations. I know that schools in my constituency were particularly encouraged by initial indications that the Bill would require schools to be mobile-free and would ensure Government support for schools as they seek to enforce effective and safe learning spaces.

The headteacher of Esher high school, Andy King, illustrated to me just how much creative problem solving teachers are having to adopt in order to keep children focused on learning, when they are walking around with such an addictive invention right in their pockets. His school has been compelled to enforce a “closed backpacks only” rule, as opposed to open bags such as handbags, so that children are not distracted by seeing a notification pop up in their open bags in class. All the headteachers I met in my constituency talked about the inattention caused by phones and the inability to focus on a whole book. Research shows that it can take up to 20 minutes for pupils to refocus after engaging in non-academic digital activity. The rise in screen time has also been linked to declining attention levels, language skills and sleep quality. It is both a learning distraction and a serious health concern.

As we celebrate International Women’s Day tomorrow, we should not ignore how children’s access to smartphones can undermine healthy relationships and the safety and wellbeing of women and girls. The Children’s Commissioner for England found that 79% of children had encountered violent pornography before the age of 18, with the average age of first exposure being just 13 years old. I know of a constituent whose child saw extreme pornography at 13 and was so traumatised that his efforts to clear his mind caused him to develop OCD. We also know that online sexual crimes against children have risen by 400% since 2013, and a staggering 81% of girls aged seven to 21 have experienced some form of threatening or upsetting behaviour online.

I appreciate what the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington has done to build the case for Government action, but it is a pity that we will not be able to test the will of Parliament for a much more ambitious approach to online safety from this Government. The Secretary of State has expressed frustration with gaps in the Online Safety Act and its implementation. This Bill could have been used to make urgent amendments to it. Why have the Government not used that opportunity, particularly when the Secretary of State indicated that there would be no new legislation any time soon?

I urge the Government to stop hiding behind endless reviews and take concrete steps—including two specific ones—to protect young people now. First, services must be required to ensure minimum age limits on their platforms. Unfathomably, Ofcom’s draft children’s codes do not impose an obligation on regulated services to enforce their own terms of service on the minimum age of users on their platforms. In consultation on the codes, children’s charities argued for that and have campaigned on it ever since. Ofcom is not listening, and the Government are doing nothing to address this. The Bill could and should have been used to plug that gap, regardless of any additional evidence the Government feel they need before making further policy or legislative commitments. Will the Government commit to doing that?

Secondly, with Meta’s announcement in the last couple of months that it is removing protections for vulnerable users from its content moderation policies, the Online Safety Act should be amended to introduce a mechanism preventing regulated services from rolling back protections in their terms of service, and setting minimum standards. Without a prohibition on reducing protections—even for children—under the Online Safety Act, platforms can keep rolling back on their user safety protections until they hit the level that is harmful for children. That cannot be right, but it can be fixed with an amendment to the Online Safety Act. Will the Government agree to use the Bill to do that?

The Bill could have been a vehicle for real policy action. Although its provisions are not as powerful as I initially hoped, some progress is better than none, so I will be supporting it. I urge colleagues across the House not only to support the Bill, but to push for the stronger, bolder reforms that our children desperately need. To say that it is inevitable is not enough. Every day that we wait is another day that a child spends 18 hours online, potentially at grave risk. I urge the Government and us all to act.

Online Safety Act: Implementation

Monica Harding Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for organising this important debate and for his continued work scrutinising this legislation.

The Online Safety Act was a landmark step towards making the internet a safer place, particularly for our children, but its implementation has fallen far short of what Parliament intended, hampered by Ofcom’s slow pace and limited ambition. Initially, the Act was designed to ensure that tech companies take responsibility for protecting users, especially children, from harmful content, but the current approach taken by Ofcom undermines that intent in several ways.

We have waited more than a year for Ofcom to complete its consultation on the illegal content codes of practice, but those codes fail to enforce a robust safety-by-design approach. Instead of proactively mitigating risks, many of its measures focus only on responding to harm after it has already occurred, and the children’s safety codes, which are still in draft, appear to follow a similarly disappointing trajectory. Features such as livestreaming, ephemeral content and recommender algorithms—tools that are frequently exploited for the purpose of online abuse—are also not meaningfully addressed in the current framework.

The Act has significant shortcomings in that it also allows companies to be deemed compliant simply by following Ofcom’s codes, regardless of whether their platforms remain unsafe in reality. This means that tech giants are permitted to hide behind a regulatory shield rather than being forced to address known risks on their platforms; all the while, children continue to be exposed to harm. The Act also explicitly requires protections tailored to different age groups, but in its implementation of it, Ofcom treats a seven-year-old and a 17-year-old as if their online safety needs are identical. In doing so, it has fundamentally failed to recognise how children’s development affects their online experiences and their vulnerabilities.

The action on fake and anonymous accounts has been slow and weak. This was a huge area of focus for parliamentarians before the Act was passed, and Ofcom itself identified it as a major risk factor in crimes such as terrorism, child sexual exploitation, harassment and fraud. As we approach 18 months since the passage of the Act, there has been no change for UK users. Instead of prioritising verification measures, Ofcom has pushed them to a later phase of implementation, delaying real action until at least 2027. That is unacceptable, especially when Ofcom’s own research shows that over 60% of eight to 11-year-olds are active on social media, despite existing age restrictions prohibiting it.

The Government’s and Ofcom’s delays in introducing user identity verification measures are unacceptable. The harms associated with fake and anonymous accounts are deeply personal and painfully real, with millions of Britons suffering from online abuse, scams and harassment each year. I hope the Minister can provide a robust explanation for the timidity and delay, and rule out any suggestion that the delays were a result of lobbying pressures from platforms. The best assurance she could give today would be a commitment that the introduction of verification measures will be brought forward to 2026, so that UK internet users are better protected.

In short, I ask the Minister to recognise the urgency of taking the following action. Ofcom must revise its codes to require proactive risk mitigation; tech companies should not be allowed to claim compliance with the regulatory framework, all the while continuing to expose users to harm; platforms must be held accountable if they fail to meet the real safety standards; and protections need to be specific to different age groups, so that younger children and teenagers receive appropriate levels of safety and access.

--- Later in debate ---

[Feryal Clark]

I expect any consultation will have to go through the Secretary of State, and I am sure it will be debated and will come to the House for discussion, but I will happily provide my hon. Friend with more detail on that.

I am grateful to all Members for their contributions to the debate. I look forward to working with the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam, and hopefully he can secure the Committee that he has raised.

[Monica Harding]

Can the Minister explain what she meant when she said that Ofcom had to ensure that the codes were as judicial review-proofed as possible? Surely Ofcom’s approach should be to ensure that the codes protect vulnerable users, rather than be judicial review-proofed.

[Feryal Clark]

The point I was trying to make was that Ofcom is spending time ensuring that it gets the codes right and can implement them as soon as possible, without being delayed by any potential challenge. To avoid any challenge, it must ensure that it gets the codes right.

Social Media Use: Minimum Age

Monica Harding Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mike Reader (Northampton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the campaigners who brought this petition forward, and particularly my constituent, who I mentioned earlier, for her tenacious campaigning on this issue at regular surgery appointments and for sharing some fascinating research with me.

While I understand the concerns driving this debate, I do not believe that a blanket restriction set at an arbitrary age is necessarily the most effective way of protecting young people online. While I believe that we need to protect young people, and adults, from the harms of social media, I will set out why I do not believe that an age restriction change is necessarily the best course of action.

A huge proportion of our young people use social media daily for research, to connect with friends and to explore the world. We know that around 40% of kids under the age of 13 are already using social media platforms, which suggests to me that age restrictions alone have limitations in practice. It is worth noting that parental awareness of those age restrictions and requirements is mixed; while nine out of 10 parents of young kids have said that they are aware of the requirements, recent studies show that less than half can actually pinpoint that 13 is the age restriction for most sites. More concerning is that a third of parents with children below the current age restriction said that they would still allow their kids to use social media. That shows that a blanket restriction will not work, and that we need to bring parents and young people along with us if we are to make online spaces safer.

The figures are concerning because when we look at the impact of social media on young people, we see a complex picture. On the one hand, research suggests that over half of 12 to 15-year-olds have negative experiences online, and a magnitude of studies, as referenced by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan), have shown a link between heavy social media use and mental health concerns. Seven out of 10 young people admit that they have experienced cyber-bullying, with over a third reporting that it happens on a frequent basis. Some have described social media as much more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol, so clearly there are concerns.

On the other hand, 90% of young people said that using social media makes them feel happier and closer to their friends. During the pandemic, these platforms provided a crucial connection when face-to-face interaction was simply not possible. Social media has prompted a revolution in peer-to-peer interaction and sharing; we, as a Government, should not do anything to stifle that growth, and the grasp of creativity that our young people are showing. Social media offers our young people an opportunity to read, watch and understand the experiences of others around the world like they never have before.

The real question is not simply whether young people under the age of 16 should be able to use social media. As the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) recognised, social media is not just about TikTok and Snapchat; it is about all the different ways in which young people connect online—and even me, when I get time to jump on the PlayStation.

The real question is this: young people are using social media and are unlikely to stop using it even if we bring in a ban, so what can we do to make it safer? Social media companies, schools and parents all have a role to play in creating safer online environments for our young people. I believe that social media can do a lot more to moderate content and provide safer spaces for our young people. Harmful content that promotes self-harm, disordered eating, bullying and body image issues should not be making it to online platforms. There has to be more accountability for the big tech giants.

Parents have to play a more active role in supervising and guiding their children’s online activities. Research shows that only six in 10 parents are aware of the technical tools and social media controls available to them, and less than a third admit to actually using them to fully control how their kids use systems online.

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

As a parent of four teenagers, I do battle on screen time every single day—so much so that my children actually thought I was coming into Parliament to give screen time to the nation. I think it is grossly unfair to blame parents or attribute responsibility to them when most parents are having this battle every single day. With the addictive algorithms on social media platforms, it is impossible for children to resist. I have a child who was 16 last week and is sitting his GCSEs. He is finding it very difficult to look away from his phone and concentrate on his studies because of these algorithms.

[Mike Reader]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. I am not saying that responsibility sits solely with parents, but parents definitely have a clear role to play. We cannot look solely to the state to help to raise our kids.

Teachers also have a big role to play. My mum, as a teacher, could tell us how important digital literacy is in this day and age. Children need the skills to navigate online spaces safely. Rather than focusing solely on age restrictions, we should consider how we make social media platforms safe for kids and improve their literacy so that they can connect with the world and explore the opportunities in front of them. Children should be aware of the risks that they face and should know how to report harmful content and navigate platforms safely. As the Government look at curriculum reform and at how we support our schools, teachers and parents, I hope that digital literacy will have an important place.

Social media is now fully embedded in young people’s lives. It offers the opportunity to connect and provides for creative expression and learning. Our challenge is to maximise those benefits while minimising the risks, not to remove the opportunity altogether.

Children’s Social Media Accounts

Monica Harding Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Voaden]

No, I do not believe that goes far enough. There should be a legal right to access that data without having to go through any complaints process, particularly at a time when one is struggling with the worst bereavement imaginable.

The petition seeks to address that gap in law and ensure that, in the tragic event of a child’s death, parents have the right to access their child’s account to gain closure, to preserve memories and to ensure that harmful content is removed. I support the addition of Jools’ law into the Online Safety Act, and I urge the Government to do whatever they can to apply it retrospectively for those who have campaigned on this issue.

What Ellen’s family have been through is the absolute worst imaginable, but tens of thousands of families up and down the country are struggling with the impact of social media on their children and teenagers. Those children are addicted to their screens because of the wicked algorithms that lure them in; cowed by bullies who can intimidate them in their own bedrooms late at night; struggling with their body image because they do not look like the influencers they watch; depressed because their lives do not resemble the doctored, airbrushed Instagram image of perfection; and brainwashed by influencers who spew toxic messages through their pages.

The damaging impact of social media on our children is vast. Medical professionals from all disciplines tell us regularly of the harms children are experiencing from hour after hour spent glued to a screen. Their physical health is damaged, their mental health even more so, and even their ability to communicate and socialise with other humans is changing.

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is about not only mental health harm, but inattention? I speak to many headteachers in my constituency who tell me that children are unable to concentrate any more because of hours spent on their screen. Would she agree that the Government study announced in November that seeks to explore that issue further should be published soon, because every day and every year we leave it, more children are at risk of harm?

[Caroline Voaden]

I could not agree more. What is becoming obvious is the impact of children being on their phones late at night, which affects their sleep—even that has a knock-on effect on how well they can operate.

Parents across my South Devon constituency are desperate to protect their children, but they are overwhelmed by the digital world and the power it has over young people. They need legislation to empower and support them. The NSPCC reports that over 60% of young people have encountered online bullying. That is a staggering number, highlighting the need for more robust protections from us for children in the digital space.

It is clear that we need more robust protection, and it is incumbent on us as lawmakers to protect children as we do from other harms such as tobacco and alcohol. It may be right that parents should not have access to their teenager’s social media because of privacy reasons and to protect children’s ability to seek support online, but that makes it even more important and urgent that social media companies should be required and obliged to take responsibility for watertight age verification, and that we should look seriously at raising the age of access to some social media platforms to 16.

I urge the Government to work with social media companies and other stakeholders to create a clear and respectful framework that allows parents access to their child’s social media accounts after a death with no questions asked. This is not about data protection; this is about ensuring that families can concentrate on grieving and healing rather than going into battle against the world’s tech giants.

It is abominable that any bereaved parent should have to do what Ellen and other campaigners are doing. I urge the Minister to legislate so that that does not happen again. I commend the Petitions Committee for bringing this debate to the House and the hon. Member for Sunderland Central for introducing it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg, and to debate such a powerful and moving topic.

I want to start, as more or less everyone in this room has done, by paying tribute to Ellen for her tireless campaigning work. I cannot come close to comprehending the pain that the death of Jools must have caused you, even before it was exacerbated and extended by the lack of closure when social media companies refused to give you access to data that could help to explain what happened to him and when collectively, as a society, we showed ourselves impotent to compel them to do so. Your ability to turn that pain and that love into such a powerful petition and call for action, which motivated so many parents in my Hitchin constituency to sign up to it too, is a true inspiration to so many of us in the room. Just as we are inspired by you, we are inspired by the many families here with you today as part of the Bereaved Families for Online Safety support group, which has been doing so much important campaign work on the issue.

It is pretty clear to all of us who have spoken today that for far too long we have tolerated a belief that online harm is too tricky and too practically infeasible to regulate in the same way that we would regulate every other form of harm to which a young person could be exposed, often in contexts in which as legislators we have historically been more comfortable getting involved. We cannot tolerate that state of affairs any longer. Although there have been some steps forward, which are to be welcomed and which I will touch on shortly, the petition highlights several areas in which it is clear that we need to consider going further to ensure that we are all living up to our duty to do everything we can to protect young people right across society.

Both as a teacher and as a children’s social lead, I got to see at first hand some of the very real ways in which young people can be exposed to harm by our failure to act on the issue of social media and online harm over the past decade. As an MP now, I am always struck by the fact that, heartbreakingly, whenever I do an assembly, even in a lower school or a primary school, almost without fail there will be one young person, and often several, who will raise their hand and talk to me about an example where they have been made to feel unsafe or at risk online and ask what I, as their MP, am going to do about it. I know that urgency to act is felt by so many colleagues across party boundaries, both in this Hall today and across the House.

The petition focuses on particular aspects where we could do more to ensure that parents have both the right ability to provide oversight for children on social media and access to really important data after bereavement. I know that, following the petition, there has been some important progress from the Online Safety Act to give some powers to coroners and to Ofcom to ensure that in certain circumstances they can support parents’ ability to access that data, but as colleagues have pointed out, there are clear areas in which it does not go far enough.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) set out, it is pretty clear that at the moment some ambiguity in the legal position is being used as an excuse by social media companies not to act. We should not tolerate that; we should do all we can, hopefully as a Government, to clarify the position. Collectively, we should not be letting social media companies off the hook for not doing everything in their power to give the families access to the data where no right-minded individual could see any reason not to and where no right-minded individual or agency is likely to seek recourse against them for doing so. So many Members have rightly pointed out that that feels like an excuse, not a reason, to fail to disclose data. We should not tolerate that excuse from companies that we come into contact with in our work as representatives.

However, as has rightly been pointed out, it is important that we do not just look at this issue in the context of the existing legislation. We know that there are very real risks after bereavement that the data could be deleted. As my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) pointed out, thinking about ways in which we can compel earlier notification to Ofcom and to social media companies and online platforms that can have that data in order to remove that risk at source is surely a common-sense way of ensuring that that risk to getting justice and getting closure can be closed off.

Moreover, the petitioner and many others rightly point out and ask us to reflect on the fact that if we are really interested in child safeguarding and keeping young people safe, it simply cannot be only after a tragedy, after bereavement, that the opportunity for parental oversight and involvement takes place. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central rightly set out some of the very real and justified concerns that children’s charities and advocates have about unfettered and complete access, but as many other Members have set out, that should not be the case. It should not be beyond us to reason and think through how, in exactly the same way that parents provide oversight over every other aspect of a young person’s life, they can have access to the best and most sensible ways to do so on this platform, too. As the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) pointed out, thinking about the age at which young people can meaningfully and rightfully consent to opting out of parental oversight has to be part of that process.

It is fair to say that a few hon. Members are concerned that the implementation of the Online Safety Act, as it is currently envisaged and as some of Ofcom’s recent publications show, may fall short of doing justice to the importance of the issues. Whether it is considering what more we can do to protect young people from imagery and content relating to suicide and self-harm on social media, ensuring that we do not tolerate technical infeasibility as an excuse for tech companies not to act on the most egregious forms of harm, or having well-intentioned and important conversations about the right age of consent, to which many Members have alluded today, there is clearly a lot more that we can do collectively.

[Monica Harding]

Will the hon. Member go further and say that Ofcom’s implementation so far has been weak, overly cautious and fundamentally disappointing? Does he concur that it is unfair to put parents in the intolerably pressured situation of being the policemen of their children’s social media activity?

[Alistair Strathern]

Some aspects of how Ofcom has said it will take these matters forward are to be welcomed, but I absolutely agree with the underlying sentiment of the hon. Lady’s comment. Currently, what has been set out does not go anywhere near far enough. As representatives of our communities and of the families who want to do everything possible to keep young people safe from online harm, it is our responsibility to ensure that we are holding Ofcom accountable for being far more ambitious about how it can most creatively and robustly deploy the powers that we are giving it to keep young people safe.