Social Media: Ban for Under-16s

Sam Carling Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Tony Vaughan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Those mechanisms—those tests—are all key in deciding whether a ban can be implemented and can work.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

My hon. and learned Friend is being very generous with his time. Does he share my concern that the Molly Rose Foundation’s research shows that 61% of Australian 12 to 15-year-olds are still accessing the platforms from which they are supposed to be banned? Does he agree that this potentially exposes some weaknesses in the concept of a platform-based ban and that a functionality-based ban should be considered instead?

[Tony Vaughan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have to make sure that we are dealing not just with lists, but with functionality. We are laying down the gauntlet to stop children’s access. The next question is: if these companies want to have access, how do we allow that safely? If that cannot be proved, they should not have access to children, as far as I am concerned.

I want to address the issue of virtual private networks. Some people say, “Look, children are just going to get around a ban”, but most children who get around age checks do it in simpler ways. In Australia, only one in 20 had used a VPN. Platforms already know a great deal about where their users are. There must be a duty on them to understand where their users are and to prevent children from gaining access. Barnardo’s goes further and wants VPNs to be age-gated. My understanding is that the Government have ruled that out for now, so what evidence would make them think again? It is an important point where the evidence is key.

The second question that young people often ask me is, “Won’t we just move somewhere worse if a ban comes into place?” Young people in Australia report using messaging apps and gaming platforms more following the ban. Australia’s e-safety regulator did a three-month evaluation of 803 children aged 10 to 15 before the ban came into force and again in March to April this year, and the share using messaging apps daily or more rose from 40.5% to 52%. The share playing video games online every day rose from 26% to 29%, which is also significant. That is why the rules must follow the features wherever they appear, including gaming, messaging, AI and app stores.

A third question is, “If something goes wrong, can I still tell somebody?” Research for the Molly Rose Foundation found that girls’ confidence to tell a teacher falls from 55% to 36% if they are still on a banned app. The message to that cohort must be that it is the platform that broke the rules in that situation, not them. These are not sanctions on individuals; they are duties on the companies.

A fourth question, which an hon. Member mentioned, is, “What about my support network?” For LGBT, neurodivergent and isolated young people especially, we need a transition plan so that they know how to retain access to confidential advice networks and safe online support before restrictions take effect, alongside investment in welcoming local youth services.

A fifth question is, “Where is the proof that a ban would work?” The long-term studies are not yet in, but last week Ofcom published its first report on content harmful to children. It concluded that there had been no significant change in the proportion of children encountering harmful content nine months after the children’s safety duties came into force, and that in a four-week period 14% of 11 to 17-year-olds saw suicide or self-harm content, 23% saw content promoting eating disorders and 61% saw bullying content, most often through their personalised feeds.

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[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. The petition calls for the Government to rethink their ban on social media for under-16s. I want to set out why I agree with the aims of the petition and substantially with the 457 of my constituents who signed it.

I recognise that the Government’s policy was brought in with the best of intentions, but I have serious concerns that it will not be workable and that it will take away a lot of value. I am glad that Parliament has spent a lot of time recently debating the harms caused by poorly regulated social media. Urgent action is needed but, in looking at the current state of the online world, we have lost sight of what social media could and should be.

I will, and do, strongly criticise how tech companies have increasingly sought to make social media addictive, and have turned a blind eye to horrific exploitation and abuse online, as well as to deeply harmful content along the lines of what my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) just mentioned. We must force them to act in those areas, but their failure to do so to date must not lead us to conclude that social media itself is an unfixable problem, when it can bring positives to people’s lives.

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

When the Education Committee looked at online harms, we had every major social media corporation before us. They did not recognise our characterisation of their features as inherently addictive. Does my hon. Friend agree that, with that kind of denial going on, we have very few options available other than to ensure that corporations’ access to our children is restricted? That is how we should look at it, rather than as restricting children’s access to social media.

[Sam Carling]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that social media companies having denied a lot of the problems and treated this as a non-serious issue is deeply wrong and alarming. I hope he will agree with some of my proposals for how we may look at that.

The petition emphasises the community and connection that social media currently offers young people. I have personal experience of that. I have spoken about this in debates before, but when I was about 13, I realised that my sexuality was not like that of those around me; I was not straight. But living in a rural area and growing up in quite a homophobic, close-knit religious community, I had few people to talk to about that. Social media was such a valuable tool for me to be able to connect with other LGBT people in similar situations. Had I not had it, I would have been far more alienated and alone, and lacking peer support. I fear that a blanket ban on social media could risk making that a reality for many and I cannot support that—not after the lifeline that online conversation gave me when I was growing up.

That does not just go for LGBT people. Growing up in a rural area more generally can create barriers for children, whose friends may live some distance away. If used properly, online spaces can help to widen social circles and maintain friendships made in the real world. I do not want young people to lose that because of the way tech companies are acting. Without a doubt, we need to seriously strengthen safeguards. Clearly, significant work needs to be done to keep children safe online. However, a blanket ban would be clumsy and risks being completely ineffective.

I worry in particular that the proposed named-platform approach would result in a constant game of whack-a-mole between children and Ofcom as the former migrate to new platforms as the old ones are made unavailable. Young people are far more digitally literate than older generations have sometimes grasped and they move faster than I believe any regulator could. Although well meaning, a blanket ban could drive children to fringe platforms that are even less well regulated, where extreme content could be even more prevalent. That is an outcome that I am sure nobody wants.

Earlier this year, the NSPCC, the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, the Molly Rose Foundation and a long list of other child safety experts signed a letter to the Government warning that a blanket ban was a “blunt response”. They are united in calling instead for more accountability from the big tech companies. The NSPCC, for example, has been clear that the Government need to stop companies designing their platforms in a way that is addictive to children, and use the full force of the law to make sure that social media platforms are safe for children to use.

I support a functionality-based approach: limiting certain features without creating a situation in which children—who will find a way to use social media regardless —are led on to more extreme platforms. We are seeing some of the risk with this right now in Australia, which has had a social media ban in place. According to research from the Molly Rose Foundation, 61% of Australian 12 to 15-year-olds are still accessing platforms that they are meant to be banned from. That is clear evidence, in my mind, of why platform-based bans are not the answer and why we must change course. A functionality-based approach would benefit users of all ages, frankly, by limiting the addictive and AI-generated content that has increasingly plagued the major sites in recent years. I say that because addictive content affects adults, too, and not just children.

Targeting functionalities could also stop the race to the bottom when it comes to short-form content. The popularity of short-form videos exploded with TikTok a few years ago, and now pretty much every platform has a shorts feature. Even LinkedIn has experimented with one. It seems that many platforms have felt the need to introduce a shorts feature in order to remain competitive, even when it does not quite seem to fit—take YouTube, which was always designed for long-form content, or Instagram, which has increasingly promoted its Reels function over the more traditional posts feed that it was known for.

I think that a lot of short-form content has exacerbated a lot of underlying problems, particularly in relation to algorithmically driven harmful content, which we need to bear in mind. However, I can certainly envisage a scenario in which several platforms would probably not really have an issue with getting rid of their shorts features —which have led to so many of the problems that we are talking about—if others did so too. That is where regulation could step in. Any regulation of social media companies needs to take into account the decisions that they are making and why they are being made, so that we can force them to do things better.

On the subject of YouTube, I would like briefly to highlight the fact that it is explicitly included in the ban. I think that is particularly difficult. There are of course problems with it as a platform—I have criticised it too—but it has a lot of educational content, for example. I would argue that there is an equality angle here, because although that is valuable for anyone, removing it could be a real blow for students who are trying to improve their school grades but do not have the funds to pay for private tutors. It is a real possibility that this type of ban could create significant inequalities in access to resources.

[Chris Kane]

I agree with an awful lot of what my hon. Friend is saying, but is one of the problems not that we need to recognise that young people are not a single homogeneous group, and that what is good for one is not good for another? That is what the Government are wrestling with, and I have huge sympathy for what they are trying to do. While we are hearing young people’s voices, one thing that is closer to a homogeneous group is parents, who want the best for their kids. We have to try to grapple with this issue and find a way through that works. Does he agree that that is what we are trying to do and hopefully we will get there together?

[Sam Carling]

Absolutely. I welcome my hon. Friend’s contribution, and I know that so many parents are grappling with and having a lot of trouble with this issue. We need to hear their voices and what would work for them, and support them, as well as the users that we are talking about.

The enforceability of a ban is also damaged by the fact that, particularly with YouTube, a lot of viewing is done on TVs. Do the Government have any thoughts about how parents might grapple with that in a home situation, and about the enforceability of a ban in that circumstance? Ultimately, my concerns are that a blanket ban lets the big companies off the hook and will likely prove ineffective at keeping children safe. Children will still get on to online platforms, and if they are on platforms that are not well regulated, or if social media companies can argue that children are not using them when frankly they still are, they will stop focusing on child safety at all.

I want to touch on online gaming, which is underdiscussed in these conversations, with many people not necessarily recognising the social features associated with those spaces. For example, Roblox is a massive online game aimed at children. It is such a hotbed for predators that vigilantes have taken to conducting paedophile sting operations in-game, as the company’s response to online abuse has been so atrocious. One such vigilante, known online as Schlep, managed to get six child predators arrested. Roblox responded by banning him and threatening legal action. So it takes no action to stop predators, but it takes strong enforcement against people who are trying to stop them. We cannot encourage vigilantism, but the priorities there are clearly so wrong.

That is not the only example of abuse in online gaming. I have met the Breck Foundation, which was formed in 2014 after the tragic death of Breck Bednar—a 14-year-old boy groomed and murdered by someone he met while playing “Battlefield 3”. The groomer lied and manipulated Breck to gain his trust and lure him to his flat. The foundation goes into schools to improve the digital resilience of children across the country. It provides invaluable resources to help keep children safe, but crucially, it is not in favour of a blanket ban. In Breck’s case, removing his access to technology only drove the abuse underground, with a secret device provided by the abuser.

I agree with the foundation that a ban risks narrowing a complex conversation. Indeed, online gaming is a fun hobby for many children and adults, and it can be very pro-social and support the development of creative skills. The current proposals do not ban online gaming for children, which is right; any attempt to do so would be devastating for people who enjoy it and they would inevitably end up in less regulated spaces, if mainstream platforms and games were clumsily cut off to them. But the proposals also do not really tackle the issues in the online gaming space, and I would like to see more recognition of what we need to do in that area.

The Breck Foundation, like other safeguarding organisations, has called for greater accountability from big tech companies. That is where we need to be. A blanket ban will not work; it would allow predators to ruin it for everyone else and essentially let them win. We need to protect the benefits that social media and online gaming can offer young people while ensuring that the companies behind them take safety and security far more seriously.

As the youngest MP, I know more than most how interwoven the online world is with growing up. We need to regulate those spaces, not hope they will magically go away—they will not.

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[Josh Dean (Hertford and Stortford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the chair this afternoon, Sir Roger. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for his opening speech and the petitioners for bringing this important issue forward.

There are a range of views on this debate, and it is so important that we listen to the young people who want us to look in detail at what the impact might be on them. It is absolutely right that we look at the concerns raised by all the young people, adults, teachers, parents and families on the impact of social media on children’s wellbeing, mental health and development. It is important that we recognise that they are genuine concerns shared by many.

I was rather looking forward to saying that I am the youngest Member in the room, but that claim has been stolen by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling). However, I am one of the few MPs who grew up with social media. Like many of my friends, I accessed social media before the age of 13. I have seen at first hand how rapidly evolving platforms have given rise to harmful content, misinformation and addiction, affecting adults as well as young people. The vast majority of colleagues in this place can remember a time before social media. Today’s generation of young people have not had that benefit. They have grown up with it, with their lives intertwined with the digital world.

Parents, teachers and young people have every right to be angry. When children are exposed to harmful content, online bullying, unrealistic expectations, addictive platform design and material that damages their mental health, it is no wonder that people feel we have not acted quickly enough in this place. I remember being a young person at school desperate for the Government to do more, and they did not. Parents are right to demand action. Parliament has a responsibility to respond. The question is not about whether we should act—of course we should. It is about what will be most effective, and it is so important that we get this right.

Earlier this year, I held a series of roundtables with secondary school pupils across Hertford and Stortford to hear directly from them about their experiences online. Many described social media as a source of anxiety. Others spoke about exposure to graphic content and misinformation—online pressures that previous generations simply did not have to navigate. The conversations I had with young people also highlighted that social media is not simply a straightforward source of risk. It can be a vital source of information, connection and support. Indeed, I first became politically engaged through the online world because, after the referendum in 2016, I was encouraged to join a protest to lower the voting age to 16, and I stood outside here with other young people calling for the voting age to be lowered. I would not have been there, and I would not be here had I not come across that through the online world.

Many of the young people I spoke to shared similar experiences and stressed that, too often, this debate overlooks the positive role that social media can play. When safe and well regulated, it can help to combat isolation and foster meaningful connections, particularly for those in semi-rural communities like mine. It can provide a lifeline for young people who are LGBTQ+, neurodiverse, or living with a mental health condition, helping them to understand their identity and access peer support networks. Many of those young people will be on long waiting lists for traditional services. Those online communities provide an essential source of support in the interim, and I worry that a blanket ban could risk pulling the rug out from under those young people and removing the safety net altogether.

One of the strongest messages I heard from young people was that they actually want us to do something to tackle online harms. Those young people were not white-knuckled, clinging on to their phones. They were telling us about their experience and that they want us to act. That should mean looking seriously at stronger age assurance, tougher regulation of harmful content, greater transparency around algorithms, meaningful parental controls and restrictions on deliberately addictive features. What it should mean is that we take the fight to the social media companies. I am, as of recently, 27 years old, and I have been waiting for this for a long time; young people today should not have to wait as long as I have.

I am cautious about the idea of a blanket ban. It is important that, whatever we do, we get it right. We must ask ourselves what happens next. If mainstream platforms become unavailable, how confident are we that young people will simply stop using online services altogether? Do we risk pushing them towards smaller, less-regulated platforms, where safeguards are weaker and oversight is more difficult? We should recognise the role that those platforms now play in civic and democratic engagement. For many young people, social media is a gateway to current affairs, public debate and political participation. This is about not just learning about politics from the online world, but engaging with it from the online world and holding politicians like us to account. While protecting children from harm, which I absolutely agree must be the priority, we need to be careful not to close off legitimate opportunities for engagement.

[Sam Carling]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the current proposals to have a hard cliff edge at 16 create a problem in terms of people suddenly being exposed to all of that world, having not really had the opportunity to develop the skills to be able to deal with it?

[Josh Dean]

I quite agree. Another colleague touched on the cliff edge: the idea that the day someone turns 16, they might get access to social media for the first time and then head off to the polling station to vote. It is right that we have more education on media literacy in schools but hands-on, practical experience in a safe and regulated online space is important as well. We have to consider how restricting young people’s access to this source of information might affect their long-term democratic participation.

If we are serious about encouraging the next generation to take part in our democracy, we have to bring young people with us on this journey, not exclude them from it. I commend the Government on their engagement with young people, parents, teachers and families across the country. Young people I spoke to were very pleased that their MP came to speak to them and hear their views, but the feedback from young people since the announcement has been less positive. It is so important that we bring them with us as we do this.

During the pandemic, we pushed more of young people’s lives online. They had no say. Education, social interaction, public services and democratic engagement increasingly moved into digital spaces. Many young people developed the habits of accessing news, discussing current affairs and engaging with campaigns through the very platforms we are now debating. We cannot rip them back out without giving them a proper say again. Protecting children from harm must be our priority, but I worry that if the answer is simply to ban access, we risk alienating the generation we seek to protect. They will not forgive us if we get this wrong, nor will their parents. If we shut them out of conversations, information and opportunities for participation that increasingly shape modern civic life, we should not be surprised if they choose not to engage going forward.

The challenge before us is not simply to restrict access to a list of platforms, but to create an online environment in which young people can participate safely, responsibly and confidently as future citizens. Yes, we should act. Parents are right to expect action. Young people themselves are asking for action. But let us focus on the features, the business models and the failures of regulation that are causing harm rather than assuming that a blanket ban is the only solution available and putting the pressure of companies’ failures on the shoulders of young people.

Will the Minister update the House on how the Department is assessing evidence from countries, such as Australia, that have pursued a social media ban for young people? Will he confirm that restrictions will be regularly reviewed and remain adaptable, given the current pace of technological change?

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[Fred Thomas]

I take the hon. Member’s point. The scale of what those companies know about us—whether we want to acknowledge that or not—really does not correspond to whether we have put our age into an online form or not. We can live in a world where we pretend they do not know that about us and our children, or we can live in the real world where they do know it, and we should just acknowledge that. It is not an invasion of privacy to acknowledge that because it has already happened. To get away from that would be a much bigger debate—not about restricting some aspects of social media for under-16s, but a much bigger conversation around the internet. I am not saying that I endorse it, but frankly that ship has sailed.

I know people have concerns about the experience in Australia. Clearly, many young people are still using social media. I accept that no system is going to be perfect. Young people will find a way around restrictions. That happens with alcohol. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), who is not in her place just now, alluded to the fact that young people still drink alcohol illegally. They smoke cigarettes, do other activities like not wear a seatbelt, and they probably break the law or get around restrictions in some way. That does not mean that we should just throw bans out the window.

[Sam Carling]

My hon. Friend and I clearly have different solutions in mind, but what unites the Chamber is our clear demand that these tech companies sort out what they are doing. Does he agree that their atrocious behaviour is the root cause? Until that changes, and until the Government bring in methods to make it change, we will not get any further.

[Fred Thomas]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend; I guess we are just debating what those methods are. I fully agree that the cause of these issues is the technologies now being basically monopolised into four or five massive companies. This debate is about what we do to tackle that.

I will address the cliff edge argument, where some folks suggest that if we stop young people having access to certain social media until they are 16, and then they suddenly have access, they will be super-vulnerable or in some way unprepared for the social media world. I do not think that makes sense, because it implies that exposure is the same thing as preparation—it is not. The brain in someone under 16 is developing and needs protecting. It is in a better place to deal with the harms once the person is 16 than when they are 14. I do not find any credibility in that argument.

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[The Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Online Safety (Ian Murray)]

It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse. It has been a superb debate. I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on introducing this e-petition debate. It has been a very thoughtful debate, and rightly so, because questions about children, social media and online safety go right to the heart of family life in this country.

I have two young girls aged six and one. Although they are not yet at the stage of social media and telephones, the daily fight to get them off screens at that age requires the diplomatic skills of the UN, because screens are everywhere. As parents we probably set the worst examples. Our whole lives are on our phones now, whether we are at work or trying to do family admin. We all live in a digital age where we are more connected than ever before. Being online can bring huge benefits, from making new connections to learning new skills. I pay great tribute to Leo and his colleagues for setting up this petition and getting the issues brought into the public domain, while we highlight the trade-offs that the Government have to make to keep children safe.

I want to be absolutely clear from the start that children are at risk of real harm online. Those risks have been present for some time, and successive Governments have failed to regulate to keep children safe online. As the Secretary of State has made clear, our ambition is not simply to make the online world safer, but to enable and empower children and young people to use it safely. That requires an active Government who are prepared to step in when children are being harmed, but also to step in to give children alternative uses for both the online and offline world. We are not starting from scratch. The Online Safety Act introduces one of the most robust systems globally for protecting children from harm online. It is important to state that the Act is not perfect, but everything that we do beyond this builds on the Act. It is one of the most robust pieces of legislation globally to try to protect children from harm.

I take on board the criticisms and points made by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) and other Members about the Ofcom analysis, which showed that over the first nine months it had not seen a major reduction in online harms among children. None the less, we can prove the counterfactual that there has not been a massive increase, so perhaps the Online Safety Act is working to the extent of not increasing the harms. However, we want to get the harms to the lowest possible level.

We have to be honest: we will never deal with 100% of harms. What we are trying to do with the Online Safety Act and all the regulations on top of that—the under-16 social media ban, features and functionalities bans, and AI chatbot restrictions—is layer on as much as we possibly can to increase the number of harms we can take out of the system. We will never get to 100%, though, and we have to be honest about that.

The Online Safety Act’s child safety duties came into effect in July 2025, requiring platforms to prevent children from encountering pornography, self-harm material and suicide and eating disorders content. Providers must also protect children from other types of harmful content such as violent content and bullying and abusive content. But we always knew we had to do much more. That is why earlier this year we launched the “Growing up in the online world” consultation to hear directly from parents, experts, stakeholders and, more important, young people themselves. The wider public also had to be involved in deciding how we can make the online world safer and more enriching for our young people.

The consultation received more than 116,000 responses. Nine in 10 parents who responded told us they support a ban on social media for their children. The analysis showed they were screaming out for help, to go to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith). Although what we heard from young people themselves was more nuanced, two thirds of children who responded to the consultation told us that they would support age restrictions for under-16s on at least some social media. Ofcom’s latest research found that almost three quarters of children aged 11 to 17 had seen or heard potentially harmful content online in a four-week period, including six in 10 who encountered bullying and five in 10 who encountered hate content directly.

We believe that social media services create unique risks for children, and while many of them have made welcome changes, they have not gone far or fast enough to keep our children safe. We think that the responsible thing to do is ban social media companies from offering services to children under 16, but it does not stop there. This is not about stopping children from going online altogether; it is about making sure that the services they use are safe and suitable. To make these changes work, companies will be required to use highly effective age assurance that is backed by Ofcom’s robust enforcement powers.

[Sam Carling]

I appreciate the Minister’s tone and the different considerations he is bringing in, but does he agree that it is very difficult to define social media? We have a definition in the traditional sense, but there are social platforms now that operate primarily on an anonymous basis instead of having identities behind them, and there are online gaming platforms and so on. How do the Government propose to deal with the fact that social media is a very loose term now?

[Ian Murray]

That goes to the heart of the problem, because social media is indeed a very loose term. Platforms that might have been out of scope are perhaps being brought into scope by having new functionalities that we might think are different from the social media platforms we are seeking to regulate. For example, Spotify has introduced stranger conversation functionality to its platform. Does that mean that it comes within scope? It depends how social media is defined and whether platforms are morphing into something different. For example, when Facebook was first introduced, it was a service for bringing university students together and letting them communicate with each other. It is now a worldwide content platform where anyone in the world—billions of people—can sign up for an account, interact with each other and upload their own content, which can be served through algorithms; of course, every bit of it is monetised. My hon. Friend is right that technology is moving very quickly, as is the definition of social media, and that is why the regulations have to be flexible enough to deal with some of those harms. I will return to the question of scope shortly.

To answer the question asked by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk, the first regulations will be laid before Parliament before the start of the Christmas recess, with restrictions coming into effect in spring next year. While social media services pose a unique risk, there are, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) said, other services that children can access that have many of the same harmful functions. That is why we are also preventing under-16s from accessing some of the riskier features. They will not be able to livestream themselves or communicate with strangers on a wide range of services, including gaming. We call this the Australia-plus model because we are bringing in gaming, which is not included in the restrictions there. 16 and 17-year-olds will have those protections applied by default. There will be no cliff edge on the adult social media experience: when they hit 16, restrictions will be applied by default when they enter an account until they are 18.

We will introduce default protections for 16 and 17-year-olds on persuasive features on social media such as autoplay and personalised feeds to support young people to manage their time online. We will also apply default overnight curfews, including muting push notifications. Many Members have mentioned the other features and functions on social media that are addictive but may not be as harmful as the really extreme harms, such as child sexual exploitation or some of the other stories we hear. There is a spectrum of harms, including the addictive nature of social media, the lack of sleep from using it and the neurological difficulties it is causing in the adolescent brain—that is why social media companies design them that way. In fact, there is a Science and Technology Committee hearing tomorrow morning on the neuroscience of childhood and how social media is affecting children. It is worth looking into these big issues, and that is why we are applying overnight curfews to try to combat the impact on sleep and attention as part of the social media defaults, including muting push notifications.

These protections will sit alongside a wider package of measures including stronger safeguards around AI chatbots and measures to promote a more positive and educational experience both online and offline. We want children to enjoy the benefits of the online world but give parents the confidence that they can do that safely. We know that regulation alone is not enough. We must also help children and young people to build media literacy and critical thinking skills to navigate the online world safely and prepare them for an increasingly digital future.

I have spent a lot of time in schools in my constituency talking to 11 to 15-year-olds about the social media ban. I think hon. Members are absolutely right to suggest that we do not give young people enough credit for their understanding of dangers online. They understand when there are things online that they should not be seeing. They are very much aware of bullying and of those addictive features, and we do not give them enough credit for being able to navigate this themselves.

We are therefore strengthening digital resilience and media literacy through changes in the curriculum and practical support for parents and carers, while helping children and families to access high-quality online content. This is about building on the protections that we already have and going further where children need us to. The Government cannot and will not look the other way. We must move more quickly and decisively to keep people safe online, and nowhere is that responsibility more important than in protecting children from harm.

Since I took on my online safety role in the reshuffle, I have spent a lot of time with grieving families. I encourage all Members of this House—Ministers, Cabinet members, Back Benchers and those who are just interested in this issue—to spend some time with the grieving families to hear directly from them how social media has impacted their family life. They have some incredibly difficult stories that are harrowing to hear, but I think all Members should hear them. The test for the Secretary of State and me is that if we get to the end of this process and find that all these regulations would not have saved their children from the harms that led to their deaths, we will have failed their children and failed to protect the children of the future from harm. That is a very high bar, but it is a bar we have to meet, because the social media companies have not. Over years, if not decades, they have consistently turned the other way, and they are starting to take action only because they realise that legislation is coming to restrict accounts for under-16s.

Our job as a Government is to build an online world that is safer and more responsible, where platforms take responsibility. If we ask more of the online world, we should also offer more in the real world: stronger communities, better youth provision and more trusted adults around young people. Safety is not just about what we block; it is also about what we build, and we are determined to do that.

I will run through some of the interesting and important questions that hon. Members have raised. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, who introduced the debate with a tremendous speech, talked about age-gating and the Australian example. What Australia has not done—we have been learning this from Australia—is have highly effective age verification. That is the gateway to making sure that the ban works. Many hon. Members have rightly challenged me, as the Minister responsible, on what that will look like. We are looking at this at the moment. Should it be at the app store level, as the shadow Minister said? Should it be at the device level? Should it be at the level of each individual social media platform? We are working through those issues to see what the most effective option is, but the principle for us is to ask, “What is the most effective system of age verification to ensure that under-16s are protected from social media platforms?”

My hon. and learned Friend talked rightly about the risky parts of gaming. We are bringing gaming into our approach, through features and functions. We will pass the under-16s social media ban this side of the new year, and it will come into effect in the spring of next year; we will then bring forward a host of regulations on features and functions, including stranger communications, which is the biggest problem with Roblox and some of the other issues that hon. Members have raised. That will allow gamers to continue to have the functionality of stranger pairing, but without the ability to talk to strangers in a gaming context. That should resolve some of these issues. A lot of the harms are where vulnerable people are taken from the gaming environment to other platforms, in order for grooming and exploitation to continue. That is a commitment of the features and functions part of this, which overlays the social media ban.

I will talk a little about isolating young people, because that is always on my mind; I know the Secretary of State thinks about it a lot as well. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire, who is the baby of the House—I was hoping to be the baby of this debate, but I have been beaten by probably everybody else in the Chamber—for telling his personal story, which is a very brave thing to do. Isolation is a concern, particularly for vulnerable communities, but from the data and information that we have, we are seeing that the most vulnerable young people are the most susceptible to being involved in these harms.

The balance here is about whether we have these spaces where young, vulnerable people can seek that advice or the communities that they wish to be part of and where they can have that enrichment, or whether we protect them. On balance, protecting people is probably the best place to be, while enriching the offer that we can give young people so that they are confident that they can go to safe spaces with safe people they can talk to about their experiences. This is not an easy thing to resolve. If anyone said it was, they would not be telling the truth.

Let us talk a little about the way back. Essentially, it all comes down to the scope of the social media ban. What we want to do with the ban, which we announced in June, is capture user-to-user platforms whose purpose is to enable online interaction and which allow users to post material, alongside having an algorithm. The Australian regime includes platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. We will not be naming platforms directly in the regulations. Ofcom will subsequently apply the regulations to the social media companies and then determine whether it will produce a list of the companies that are in scope. I will explain what Ofcom will do in the regulations and what the thought processes are. Social media companies that think that they are in scope and that have more than a certain number of users will have to self-notify to Ofcom as being in scope of the legislation, and then conform to the regulations. We are working through the detail of how we translate the Australian scope into the UK context, and it is really important to get this right within that.

Several hon. Members talked about the regulations, about meeting the criteria and about what the off-ramp is. Essentially, the off-ramp or the way back is for platforms to prove, through their design, that they meet the regulations. It is just a case of reversing the situation. If stranger communication is banned and your online platform is subsequently not to be available to under-16s but you have that functionality, it is quite clear that you do not comply with the regulations, so the way back is to comply with the regulations and fall out of scope. That is an easy thing to say but not an easy thing to deliver, but that is the principle with which we will go forward on this.

If there are services like Lego Play or—YouTube has been mentioned—YouTube Kids, are there ways in which you can stop the harms being created by the algorithms, the recommender systems, the commenting systems or the conversations that can be had with strangers? If you have created a service that complies with all the regulations, is it then available to under-16s? I would say that currently the Government’s position is that, yes, there has to be an off-ramp, and the Canada model is something that we are looking at quite closely in terms of its regulations.

Bronze-age Heritage: Cambridgeshire

Sam Carling Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Pakes]

I wholeheartedly agree. Fundamentally, we are talking about our shared heritage—the heritage not just of Peterborough, but of Cambridgeshire and of Britain and Northern Ireland as a whole. In that light, I want to talk about access, because it matters that young people in our area can access and learn from these sites. In an age where we focus a lot on immigration, Flag Fen and Must Farm are evidence that people have been coming to Peterborough as traders and neighbours for more than 1,000 years.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

Must Farm is just outside my constituency, in the constituency of the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), who I am very pleased to see here. It provides great support for people in Stanground in my area. Will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming its contribution to the broader area and exploring how we can encourage more people to visit it?

[Andrew Pakes]

I certainly welcome that, and I also welcome the number of Cambridgeshire MPs who are here to celebrate our county’s rich bronze-age heritage.

Too often, young people are denied the chance to learn about their history because of the lack of public transport linked to places such as Flag Fen, and because of the pressures on school budgets restricting opportunities for visits and learning. We are beginning to turn that around, and I am proud of our record in Government so far, but there is more to do. A rich world on our doorstep is something that all students should be able to learn from, regardless of background or wealth.

Flag Fen’s story began with its discovery in 1971, when excavations ahead of the construction of Peterborough new town revealed an almost intact bronze-age landscape running along the edge of the drained fen. Then, in November 1982, archaeologists surveying the depths of the basin came across the timbers of what proved to be an internationally important site, Flag Fen. The rich archaeological collection and remains there are important in understanding the wider prehistoric landscape of the Flag Fen basin, and what was happening in Britain during the bronze age.

Almost since Flag Fen’s discovery, the management strategy has been to protect these remarkable remains by leaving them buried in the ground that has protected them for nearly 3,500 years. However, even then we knew that the land would not protect the archaeology forever, but that one day the precious vanished world would succumb to climate change and fen drainage, leaving nothing but dust. That goes to the heart of one of the challenges now: new evidence suggests that we have reached the point where, without intervention, we will move from protection to abandonment. We need a new approach to capture the value of places such as Flag Fen, and retain their special place in our community for the benefit of generations to come—a new mission, we might say, to create access on all levels through new interpretations and historical knowledge.

Cambridgeshire is also home to Must Farm; I am delighted that this week Peterborough Museum has been awarded a £250,000 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to support a two-year initiative centred on the internationally significant bronze-age archaeology at Must Farm in Whittlesey. The discovery in 2015 of the Must Farm settlement, dubbed the “Pompeii of the fens”, provided an extraordinary glimpse into everyday life in the bronze age due to the exceptional preservation of its artefacts. This newly funded project, entitled “My Must Farm”, will encourage communities to bring those discoveries alive in imaginative and exciting ways for visitors from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and hopefully beyond.

I thank the Government for their commitment to heritage in Peterborough and more widely, but I want to highlight a few threats facing our heritage sector. I have already mentioned accessibility and the rural nature of the sites that I have referred to, but there are also socioeconomic barriers. Deprivation is a huge issue for many places, including Peterborough; families who are worse off could be barred from accessing the heritage right on their doorstep. Improved access will help to develop a stronger pride in place and open opportunities that can seem unattainable to some families nowadays.

The numbers of bronze-age wetland archaeology specialists are in decline, which puts future high-quality management of bronze-age discoveries in Cambridgeshire and elsewhere at risk. That speaks to career paths and pay for archaeologists. Increasingly, those entering the field are forced to make tough decisions about whether they can afford to be archaeologists or need to pursue other paths with better pay.

Finally, there is the issue of heritage crime. Flag Fen has suffered two catastrophic arson events in the last five years. The first destroyed a building used as an education room for visiting schoolchildren, and the second, in July this year, destroyed a replica iron-age roundhouse. The effect of both fires was to remove spaces that are used by schools for learning and “outside the classroom” programmes.

Heritage is our shared inheritance, and it is a privilege to represent a community in a county that has a rich bronze-age heritage.

Heritage Sites: East of England

Sam Carling Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts (Ian Murray)]

I am pleased to respond to this Adjournment debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Pam Cox) on securing it and wish her a very happy Essex Day. That is something I never thought I would say from the Dispatch Box, but I wish everyone a happy Essex Day none the less.

As my hon. Friend laid out, the east of England has a unique and rich heritage. It is awash with nationally significant heritage assets such as the Iron Age neolithic flint mines at Grime’s Graves, Framlingham Castle and Tudor Lavenham, and historic houses such as Audley End House and Sandringham—and, of course, we heard about Knebworth House too. The region is also home to a rich Roman heritage, which is no more evident than in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Colchester, which is not only, as she said, Britain’s oldest recorded settlement, but the former Roman capital, with its iconic Roman circus. She called it “Ben-Hur” but in Essex—I am not quite sure what that film would be called, but perhaps we can leave that sticking to the wall, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I want to take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend for her work to preserve heritage in her constituency, including the grade II listed Balkerne water tower, which she also mentioned. I know that she has been involved in efforts to restore it and secure its future, and that exciting plans are in train. If there is anything the Department can do to help her with those plans, we stand ready to do so.

As my hon. Friend said, our local heritage tells the story of who we are and forms the cornerstone of our communities in the present in order to preserve the past. The Government are proud to support communities to celebrate the heritage buildings and assets they value and ensure that they can continue to meet their needs in the present and into the future.

Earlier this year, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State marked the 60th anniversary of the first ever arts White Paper and announced £270 million of funding to fix the foundations of our arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage sector in communities right across the country. That ambition is now starting to bear some fruit. My hon. Friend’s constituency has benefited directly from nearly £1.3 million of Arts Everywhere funding to protect Colchester castle for future generations, enabling urgent maintenance and roof repairs to ensure the landmark’s future.

Furthermore, I am pleased to say that, as announced in August, through the Government’s heritage at risk capital scheme, 37 much loved historic buildings and sites in the places across England that need it most will receive funding to support repairs and restoration. That much needed funding will breathe new life into our heritage and, in many cases, help turn it into vibrant spaces that our communities need today. Over £2 million of that funding is going to projects in the east of England, including £700,000 to bring Lowestoft’s derelict town hall back to life as a fully accessible public space with an art gallery, café and events venue, and £137,000 for the Iron Duke restoration project in Great Yarmouth, which my hon. Friend mentioned, bringing the building back into use and creating 50 much needed new jobs for the area.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

I am really lucky in North West Cambridgeshire to represent a whole variety of heritage sites of different sizes, including Burghley House, which I visited recently—a 16th century stately home that welcomes thousands of visitors each year to the house itself and the gardens—and smaller sites such as John Clare Cottage, where the famous poet lived, the surroundings of which inspired so much of his poetry. As well as welcoming the local, national and international tourism to those sites, does the Minister agree that it is important that we support the educational work they do in respect of local history, agriculture and the natural environment?

[Ian Murray]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because it is true: as we have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, our heritage is about our future, but it is also about learning about our past. It is good for social cohesion, but it is also tremendous for education, and Burghley House and the John Clare Cottage in North West Cambridgeshire play a vital role in that education. I am pleased to confirm that this year we continued Historic England’s Heritage Schools programme, which supports teachers to bring local heritage into teaching across the curriculum. I hope that that continues, because it is very much a passion of the Secretary of State and I; we really want to make sure that our heritage across the United Kingdom is shared by everyone. The Arts Everywhere project is so important for community cohesion and for young people’s learning about our history and shaping its future.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester set out, preserving and maintaining the rich heritage of this region or any region can be expensive and challenging. In addition to the funding that I have already mentioned, there have been many other interventions by the Government, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England to make safe, to maintain and to preserve the region’s invaluable heritage assets. In 2023-24 alone, the National Lottery Heritage Fund gave £33.5 million for heritage in the east of England, including £13 million to Norwich castle, an iconic site in the city originally commissioned by William the Conqueror.

Thanks to sustained investment in our heritage, we are seeking seeing at-risk heritage sites removed from Historic England’s heritage at risk register. My hon. Friend said that that is the legacy that we should leave for future generations because we are custodians of our heritage. That is what the risk register is there for, and I am delighted to see that sites are being removed from the register because of that investment. The register gives an annual snapshot of the health of England’s valued historic buildings by identifying sites most at risk of loss due to neglect. It lists 427 entries in the east of England alone in 2024, but by working closely with partners and communities, 14 sites have been removed from the register, with £800,000 in grants being awarded for repairs to an additional 25 sites last year. We are making progress, and we are also making it easier for communities to take ownership of the heritage assets they love by providing nearly £5 million through the heritage revival fund delivered by the Architectural Heritage Fund.

In addition, we have changed the definition of an asset of community value to state clearly that heritage buildings are included in that, so that they can be assets for the community to take on. Maintaining our historic heritage does not necessarily mean preserving it in aspic as a relic of the past. In our towns and cities, old and new stand side by side, and our heritage has a key role to play in delivering the Government’s ambitious commitments to boost economic growth and build 1.5 million new homes alongside our existing heritage.

There are examples up and down the country where growth and development can co-exist with our wonderful heritage. A local example is Lexden Gardens, which is in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Colchester. That development, which will see the creation of 120 new homes on the former Essex county hospital site, includes the restoration of the grade-II listed main hospital, which has deep rooted heritage connections and significance to the local community. To support our ambitions, we are working across Government to streamline the planning system, including the role of Historic England as a statutory consultee, to ensure timely, expert advice that supports high-quality development. The Government remain committed to protecting historic assets and will ensure that any changes to the planning system do not remove the quality of advice or heritage safeguards.

My hon. Friend asked some questions. I think I have a few minutes to run through some of those. She asked whether we would address the issues with regards to enhancing the importance of heritage, culture and tourism within the ongoing devolution process in the east of England. I can assure my hon. Friend that there has been no change in position between the two papers that she cited. The Government remain committed to supporting local areas to deliver their own priorities, including widening access and participation to culture and heritage and harnessing their potential for community transformation and economic growth. The Department’s arm’s length bodies, such as Historic England, will continue to explore how to work in partnership with strategic authorities within the ongoing devolution process in the east of England.

My hon. Friend asked about the local heritage architecture and the possibility of restructuring the mighty starting gates of the circus based on designs of others elsewhere. It is an incredibly interesting project. My hon. Friend Baroness Twycross in the other place takes the heritage portfolio, so I will ensure that my hon. Friend gets a meeting with her to discuss the project in detail. The scheduled monuments like the Roman circus are protected in the form they have been passed down to us by previous generations, but should a proposal come forward to reconstruct elements of the circus, as she has laid out, it would require careful consideration through the scheduled monument consent process. I understand Historic England continues to work with Colchester council on that exciting project.

My hon. Friend also asked about synergies in the Department’s responsibilities for cultural heritage and media. I agree that virtual and augmented reality have great potential to bring our heritage to life. In fact, through programmes like the Audience of the Future and the creative clusters, we have demonstrated the value that immersive reality can bring to all sorts of experiences, including museums and storytelling. If she wants to take that particular issue to Baroness Twycross as well when we arrange that meeting, that is something she would be very much interested in hearing about in terms of how augmented and virtual reality could create a real benefit to the people of Colchester and, indeed, the Roman castle site.

Finally, my hon. Friend asked whether the Government will create a dedicated regional heritage strategy for the east of England—one that can help shape the devolved strategy in itself. Our devolution reforms aim to put power back in the hands of local leaders and local people, and to support mayoral strategic authorities to lead strategies in the areas they want to prioritise to drive the change they want to see—I have no idea what that means either, but I think it basically means that the power of having the strategic authorities is from the grassroots up. Indeed, we should be working with our local councils, local members and the strategic authorities for that to happen. Again, Baroness Twycross would be happy to talk to my hon. Friend about that.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate and providing me with the opportunity to reiterate the Government’s commitment to protecting and enhancing our shared heritage. We will continue to invest in our heritage, to forge collaborative and collective partnerships and to approach development in a pragmatic way, ensuring that precious sites, many of which have been mentioned by hon. Members, such as the Roman circus and the Balkerne water towers, as well as sites in the east of England and beyond, are not only preserved but celebrated for generations to come. I look forward to seeing the ongoing positive impact of these heritage projects in Colchester and across the east of England as we continue to build a future where our rich history stands proudly alongside new growth opportunities in all our communities.

Question put and agreed to.