Smartphones and Social Media: Children

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) for making one of the most superb speeches that I have heard in my time in this House.

In the 1940s, advertising men told us that more doctors smoked Camel cigarettes than any other type of cigarette, and as the evidence about smoking piled up they started to say that things were complicated and that it was not obvious what was going on with smoking and cancer. That is a reminder of the ruthlessness that people can deploy when there is lots of money to be made.

When I was Public Health Minister at the Department of Health and Social Care, I was keen that we started to treat this issue as a major emerging public health problem. I am proud that smoking is going down but—oh boy—the problems caused by smartphones and social media are going up and up. The trends, including the explosive growth of children’s mental health problems and self-harm in the real world, roughly since the 2010s, can be seen all over the world at the same time. The evidence is compelling, and increasingly the causal evidence is also there, so it is clear that it is time to act.

There are many channels through which smartphones and social media cause problems. It is not just about the time taken up, the lack of sleep, the increased ADHD and the lack of concentration they cause; it is about the more subtle things as well. Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian communications theorist, said that the medium is the message, and he meant that about TV. As well as what people were watching, it mattered that people just sat there passively. Smartphones isolate us, and for young people they provide an infinite scroll through the edited highlights of other people’s lives.

There was a famous social science experiment in which people were given bowls of tomato soup and told to eat as much as they wanted. What they were not told was that the bowls of tomato soup were filling up from the bottom. People would drink extraordinary amounts of tomato soup—literally gallons of the stuff; gut-busting amounts. That is a metaphor for what the infinite scroll and the world of social media have done for us.

Young people now effectively live like politicians: they are living a second life in the minds of other people and constantly thinking about their image. They are trying to post what they are doing rather than living in the moment, with disastrous consequences. Smartphones and social media are not the only things driving these problems—adverse childhood experiences are a big part of why people have severe mental health problems, and the increased over-cossetting of children in the real world is another part of the story—but it is clear now that smartphones and social media are a big part of the story.

We have a problem, and it is a collective action problem. Parents do not want to give their kids tablets and other social media devices as early as they do, but they feel the peer pressure to do so. A study by Sapiens Labs shows incredibly clearly that the earlier a parent gives their kids these things, the worse they will do. Kids do not want these things either. A 2018 report by the Science and Technology Committee found, after we had talked to a lot of young people, that they would like to have a smartphone-free childhood. I am not surprised that in recent weeks we have seen literally tens of thousands of parents joining groups that try to get smartphones out of our schools.

I have a question that I really want to hear the Minister address directly. We were promised a consultation on these issues and it should be out now; when is it coming? I really want a date. Secondly, when can we implement a proper ban on phones in schools? Policy Exchange research has already been mentioned that shows that only one in 10 schools have implemented a proper ban, whereby they take phones away from children at the start of the day so that they are not constantly distracted by their phones, are not thinking about the next text, are not slipping phones out in class, and have a blissful moment when they are living in the real world, free from smartphones and social media.

This should be a beachhead for us to start to change the norm. We should start with schools but work outwards to address the effects of the increasing exposure of children to smartphones and social media, so will the Minister please undertake to look seriously at funding and insisting on a proper smartphone ban in all our schools? In that way, we can give our children something that we all enjoyed: a childhood in the real world, not trapped on a screen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Saqib Bhatti]

I will make some progress. We are aware of the ongoing debate regarding the age at which children should have a smartphone. We recognise the risks that technology such as smartphones pose, but I would argue that a ban would not necessarily achieve the outcome we wish. As has already been said, children can find ways through. We also have to consider who we are criminalising and how legislation would intervene in the lives of the private individual. We live in a digital age and many parents want their children to have a smartphone, as they provide benefits to children and parents, such as staying connected while travelling alone. In other words, trying to protect children from one harm may well lead to another. I speak to many parents who give me the other side of the argument, and I wanted to put that on the record.

The decision on whether a child should have access to a smartphone should not be one for Government. Instead, we should empower parents to make the right call for their children and their individual circumstances. In fact, parents as consumers can influence the market themselves. It is my belief that choice is a liberty that parents and children should be allowed to exercise.

I agree that online platforms must take responsibility for the harmful effects of the design of their services and their business models. That is why the Online Safety Act is a groundbreaking piece of legislation, which puts the onus on platforms to ensure that children are protected. I want to reassure parents that the legislation will change significantly how our children grow up in the online world. If social media companies do not do the right thing, we have given Ofcom the teeth to go after them—and I fully expect it to do so.

Children’s wellbeing is at the heart of the Act, and the strongest protections are for children. Under the new regulations, social media platforms will need to assess the risks of their services facilitating illegal content and activity. That includes illegal abuse, harassment or stirring up hatred. They will need to assess the risk of children being harmed on their services by content that does not cross the illegal threshold, but that is harmful to them, which is something that was brought up.

[Neil O’Brien]

Will the Minister give way?

[Saqib Bhatti]

I will make some progress as I am very short on time, and I want to give my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge time to respond.

I want to be unequivocal here: the Online Safety Act ensures that the UK is the safest place to be online, requiring all companies to take robust action against illegal content. Last week, Ofcom published the draft codes of practice for the child safety rules. Those protections are a real game changer and will establish the foundation to protect generations to come. I commend Ofcom for its proposals. It rightly puts the onus on big tech to do the right thing and keep our children safe. I say this to big tech: with great reward comes great responsibility. They have that responsibility and they must act.

Part of the codes identify risks that children need to be protected from, and they also set out the requirement for platforms to implement highly effective age assurance technology to prevent children from encountering harmful content on their services, including pornography, and content that depicts serious violence or promotes serious self-harm, suicide and eating disorders.

Tackling suicide and self-harm material is a key objective of the Online Safety Act. We have heard too many stories of the devastating impact of that content, and I commend all the parents who have campaigned on the issue. They have gone through the most unimaginable, heartbreaking and heart-wrenching challenges. We continue to engage with them, and I commend them for their bravery. There is a live consultation on age assurance at the moment and I encourage all Members to engage with that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) raised a number of key issues and I will write to her in response. She also talked about parental responsibility, which is important. I think she raised the issue of chat functions, which are also in the scope of the Online Safety Act. The hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) spoke about the tragic case of Murray Dowey. I offer my condolences to the parents and my open door; I would be more than happy to meet them with the hon. Member in attendance.

My hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) talked about the responsibility of the Department for Education. I am sure that has been heard, and I will continue to engage with Minsters. My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) talked about his Nokia 3210. Nokia has started remarketing the 3210, so he should look forward to a Christmas present—not from me, but from someone who likes him. I wish him all the best with that.

My final comment is that I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge, as would the Secretary of State.