Headteacher tells phone-addicted parents: "Make eye contact with your kids!"

An "alarmed" headteacher in England was forced to write a letter to parents reminding them to make eye contact with children rather than staring at their phones all the time.

That was one of the grim revelations about the impact social media is having on the hearts and minds of young people across Britain heard at a Parliamentary debate today.

MPs gathered in Westminster Hall to discuss whether to increase the age limit for joining social media from 13 to 16 years old. The debate was triggered after more than 127,000 people signed a petition calling for urgent action to prevent kids from accessing X, Meta, TikTok and other social networks.

Althought the debate did not set out concrete plans to ban under-16s from the socials, it vividly described the shocking impact that smartphones and social media are having on Britain's children.

MPs said that hardcore pornography was being circulated in primary school WhatsApp groups, kids were filming themselves carrying acts of sickening violence and teens were indulging in social media binges comparable to the behaviour of alcoholics of drug addicts.

The dire effects of social media

Politicians warned that smartphone addiction was destroying children's mental health, exposing them to radical political ideology and leaving them at risk of being manipulated by paedophiles, extremists or malign foreign powers, with MI5 now investigating children as young as 12 years old.

These brainwashed minors pose a "growing threat to national security", warned Tony Vaughan, Labour MP for Folkestone and Hythe, who led the debate and supports raising the social media age limit to 16. He also highlighted the risks of suicide, self-harm and cyber-bullying.

"We have seen cases where children as young as 14 have taken their own lives after being bullied or exposed to harmful online content," he continued. "During preparation for this debate, I was informed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that there is an online website posing as a community that encourages suicide.

"That is the dark and depressing side of the online world that we have to do more to tackle."

Vaughan added: "Social media can be a wonderful tool, but it has become a wild west where too much harmful content is being pushed on to young people, and social media companies are simply not doing enough to tackle it. The sad fact of the matter is that social media is pushing content that radicalises, catalyses mental health crises and is highly addictive."

Influence operations and state-backed exploitation

The ubiquity of social media is giving hostile nations the ability to influence young minds and stoke divisions, warned Patrick Hurley, Labour MP for Southport.

"There is increasingly a political element, where social media companies reflect the national interests of the host countries in which they are situated," he said.

"There are national interest considerations for the UK in regulation of social media. We do not want foreign agents and foreign actors to influence our democratic process in relation to adults and we certainly do not want them to influence the formation of the politics of our children."

It's not just the kids who have a problem with phone addiction. The statements of at least three MPs give us an obvious clue about who's to blame for the problem: parents.

Alison Bennet, the Liberal Democrat member for Mid Sussex, said: "A headteacher in my constituency was alarmed that she had to write to parents to tell them that when they collect their infants from the playground, they should put their phones away and have eye contact and engage with their children."

Later in the debate, Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda and Ogmore, talked about a visit to a primary school in Blaengarw.

"The headteacher was saying that one of the difficulties is that all the parents waiting to pick up their kids were on their mobile phones outside," he said. "Whatever they did inside the school, the message that every single child got was that life was about being on a mobile phone.

"One of the most important things that a parent can do is engage eye to eye with their children. If they are engaging eye to eye only with their phone, I would argue that that is as much of a problem."

Liam Conlon, the Labour member for Beckenham and Penge, also quoted an unnamed headteacher who said: "You wouldn’t let your child open the door to a room full of strangers and leave them in that room on their own. And unfortunately, that is what is happening when they have a smart device."

James Frith, MP for Bury, said he "regrets" buying a smartphone for his two eldest children.

Why won't the Labour government raise the minimum social media age?

It its response to the petition, Labour said it was "not minded" to ban under-16s from social media.

The government also previously rejected an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to ban mobile phone use in schools.

In the Government’s response to the petition, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology referred to a review from the UK Chief Medical Officers in 2019, which “does not show a causal link between screen-based activities and mental health problems".

"That review is six years old now, so how much evidence do the Government need?" asked Caroline Voaden, Lib Dem MP for South Devon. "Things have changed radically in the past six years, and we live in a very different digital world from 2019."

She presented evidence from a variety of research conducted in countries including the UK, Japan, Canada and Australia that found:

• 65% rise in mental health admissions to hospital among under-18s.
• A "staggering" 638% increase in admissions for eating disorders among girls aged 11 to 15, a 50% rise in childhood myopia.
• 56% increase in ADHD diagnosis since the widespread adoption of smartphones.
• 27% increase in just the last two years in the number of children with speech and language challenges.
• A rise in obesity that means that about a quarter of children leaving primary school are now judged to be overweight or clinically obese. 

"We protect our children from smoking and alcohol," Voaden said. "We do not allow them to buy those products because we know the damage they can do. Just because mental health damage is not as visible as a damaged lung or a damaged liver due to cirrhosis - just because we cannot see it, measure it and photograph it - that does not mean the evidence is not there. We can see it all around us."

Does the Online Safety Act protect children?

Several MPs discussed the Online Safety Act 2023 and its role in protecting young users online. Some emphasised the importance of effectively implementing and enforcing the Act to ensure that social media platforms adhere to their responsibilities in safeguarding children from harmful content.

The Act mandates platforms to enforce age restrictions and prevent underage users from accessing inappropriate content. MPs discussed the necessity for robust age verification systems to comply with these requirements, calling for the legislation to be regularly reviewed and updated. This would ensure that emerging threats and new forms of harmful content are effectively addressed, maintaining the Act’s relevance and efficacy.

The Lib Dems called for a public health approach to social media which would treat it like smoking. Tories tended towards a tougher stance, backing a full ban on under-16s, whilst Labour MPs acknowledged the potential harms of social media on young users but expressed reservations about implementing a complete ban.

Please let us know how social media is impacting kids in your area by contacting us at the address below.

Read a transcript of the full debate on Hansard.

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