Social Media Ban

Peer pressure is engineered into social networks, and a trillion-dollar attention economy which is fundamentally misaligned with children’s healthy development. There is powerful evidence of online harms, mental health impacts, addiction-by-design, exposure to inappropriate content, and the growing pressures placed on children at ever-younger ages. 

Social media companies have been allowed to treat our children as commodities; harvesting their data, capturing their attention, and deploying addictive algorithms with little or no accountability. The consequences for young people’s mental health, sleep, concentration and wellbeing have become increasingly apparent. 

My Liberal Democrat Parliamentary colleagues and I have consistently warned about the public‑health impact of social media harms. We supported measures to raise the digital age of consent to 16, supported restrictions on mobile phones in schools, and called for clearer health‑style warnings and limits on addictive design features such as endless ‘doom‑scrolling’. 

We have tabled an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which would introduce a harm‑based age‑rating system for social media platforms, modelled on the film classification system. Under our proposal, the most harmful platforms could be rated 18, with a default rating of 16 for any platform which exposes young users to harmful or addictive content. 

In practice, social media platforms would be assessed based on the risks they pose to children. As things stand, it is likely that TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook would be deemed unsuitable for under‑16s. Platforms which continue to host extreme or dangerous content, such as X, could justifiably fall into an 18+ category. 

I note that our approach is supported by respected charities like the NSPCC, and that the Molly Rose Foundation and 42 other charities, including Parent Zone and Childnet, described an outright ban as a wrong solution. Ian Russell, father of Molly Rose Russell, expressed concerns about “unintended consequences” and that it would “create more problems”, and expressed concern about the way some politicians had sought to “capitalise” on parental fears. 

Crucially, unlike the Conservative’s plan, this is not a blanket ban on all online services for young people. Children would still be able to access educational resources which could risk being swept up in some of the more simplistic proposals circulating in Westminster. Nor would essential lifeline services like Childline forums be blocked. 

Australia has attempted an outright ban with limited success and numerous unintended consequences. We should learn from those experiences and introduce a system which is proportionate, evidence-led and truly effective, rather than to repeat the mistakes of Australia. 

I will continue to press the Government to take children’s online safety seriously and to support measures which prioritise young people’s wellbeing over corporate profit.