Social Media: Ban for Under-16s
I appreciate your helping me not to be in trouble with my Whips, Sir Roger. I want to start by saying that everyone in this room and in this place wants to protect children. We have different ways of getting there—some of us support the ban, some of us do not—but never be in any doubt that we recognise that there are problems and are debating the best solution. Do bans work? Well, let us follow the evidence. Hon. Members will not be surprised that, as a member of the Science and Technology Committee, I will look at the evidence for what has already worked and what is happening at the cutting edge of science right the way through. Bans do not work everywhere that they have been tried; in fact, the bad activity just moves. But the bans are designed by people who, like the majority of people here, other than my younger hon. Friends the Members for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) and for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling), are Gen X or baby boomers—I am not trying to be rude Our experience and understanding of social media is very different from our children’s. They do not see Facebook as social media because they do not care about Facebook. We could ban it all we want and they would be like, “I’ve never been on it in my life, nor do I ever intend to.” They understand that there is no difference between social media and other platforms because everything is now social media: every gaming platform, every chatroom and everything that we now see. Let us look at what actually matters and what is actually happening. I do not think it is part of the conversation: we hear a lot about TikTok, Instagram and Facebook because we know about those platforms, not because that is necessarily where children are getting harmed the most. I did a survey of more than 500 young people in Milton Keynes and, given that the number of signatories from Milton Keynes Central is 503, I think they all signed the petition and found three more signatories. They were clear about where they are spending time, where they have problems, where they see material that is not all right, and where they are approached by strangers. That is happening on the platforms that we do not talk about. YouTube has amazing educational content, but it is also one of the places of most harm. Roblox is a lot of fun for gaming but that platform, although it is advertised to children, is actually one of the worst. I do not know if any hon. Members know about “the Com” and “764”, which are groups on Roblox and Discord that recruit primarily vulnerable people. They get those people to video themselves while they are self-harming and have watch parties as they self-harm each other. If we do not include Roblox, Discord and 764, we are not protecting children. In the UK, child sexual abuse images are overwhelmingly shared and distributed via WhatsApp. The radicalisation and co-ordination for things such as the riots that we sometimes see on our streets is overwhelmingly happening on Telegram and Signal. We are not talking about those places. In fact, as my hon. Friend the Member for North <span id="278WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="278WH"></span>West Cambridgeshire said, it is a whack-a-mole approach if we write a list and then have to add platform names to it. In Australia, they would have to add LinkedIn to it because that is where people under 16 will now participate in the same kind of activity as they were before. We have taken important action. We have banned the taking of child sexual abuse pictures and videos at device level. That is really important. Let us look at what else could work and what the evidence tells us. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) used the example of toys. She is right that we do not want toys or products that harm, but we do not ban the toy, we ban the thing that is wrong with it. Train sets used lead paint: we did not ban all train sets, we banned those with lead paint on them. We need to make it safe. That is why exemptions are so important: we need a route back because that will create behaviour change. We need safe places for children to learn, to play and to explore, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury said. Quite famously, I have published a nine-point plan, which I have shared quite extensively and spoken to industry about. Although it is not the be all and end all, it shows how we can create a path back if platforms meet its nine requirements. First, there should be no stranger contact: it should not be possible to contact a young person and take them on to another platform. That is not to say there are not important areas for which we could have mediated places that are safe for young people to explore sexuality and other things, but strangers should not be able to deliberately target young people on platforms. There should be no algorithm feed for under-12s. They should be using their executive function to choose what they want to watch next, not seeing what the algorithm thinks they should see. There should be only a limited algorithm feed for those aged 12 to 18. That is already happening on some platforms. In fact, some young people said to me, “I just turned 18 and I want to go back to my limited algorithm feed; I don’t like the feed I am on now.” There should be time limits by age. The inquiry of the Science and Technology Committee into digital childhoods found that time limits and age-related curfews would be the most important changes we could make. The biggest impact on mental health from social media comes from children having it in their bedrooms: they are not sleeping the hours that they should be sleeping. Curfews at device-level could save children from fear of missing out—or FOMO, as they like to call it—and let them get to sleep. The second biggest impact on young people’s mental health is from age-inappropriate material. My hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) spoke about horrific stuff with eating disorders. We must be clearer that that has real consequences. We have yet to see Ofcom use all its powers in that area. I would like to empower parents and young people by having British Board of Film Classification ratings on material so that parents are clear whether it is appropriate for their child. In addition, we have not even talked about the online advertising guidelines. Are the adverts popping up in YouTube Kids videos appropriate for children? Nobody is looking at that. The adverts that pop up in their little apps or games—“Melo’s cat cafe”, or whatever they are <span id="279WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="279WH"></span>playing—again, are not being properly regulated, although we have rules that tell us what is age-appropriate advertising. We should also have device-level age checks. Age checks are always difficult, but doing them at device level, and being clear that, when a parent passes their device down, they should clear it and set it with the proper age, is more secure than any of the things that we have talked about when it comes to children using fake identities to get on to sites. I do not want to talk about other people’s childhoods, but I may have used a fake ID in the past to buy a beer—<em>[</em><em>Interruption.</em><em>]</em> I know—shocking! The same thing is happening online. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury brought up a really important point about AI companion chatbots. This is not all right. If people do not have to pay for these homework chatbots, companion chatbots or romantic chatbots—if they do not have to pay for the product—they are the product. We have very strict rules from the Information Commissioner’s Office on data protection for children, but I have yet to see the ICO take proper action on this. Our children’s data is being fed in. The grooming and sexual behaviour is not an end in and of itself; the aim is to keep the children online to mine their data. That should be stopped right away. I thank everybody for coming to the debate, and the 503 people in Milton Keynes who signed the petition. By working together, and working with young people and parents, we can get to a solution that provides the benefits of an online childhood without all the problems that we see today.