Location: United Kingdom
The Mental Health Foundation has published its response to the UK government’s consultation on a social media ban.
The position of the Foundation is as follows:
- The current situation, whereby children are able to access unsafe social media platforms, is unacceptable, and cannot be allowed to continue.
- Many social media platforms have failed to act and continue to inflict damage on our young people. These platforms should lose access to our children as a matter of urgency.
- No social media platform should be able to have access to children unless they meet clear safety standards, independently assessed.
- Different social media platforms should have different age restrictions, reflecting the individual risks and safety measures different platforms have in place. As with films, the Foundation advocates for different age categories – such as 13, 16, and 18 - to reflect different developmental stages.
- All platforms must follow a Safety by Design approach – by which safety is proven before harm can occur – not after it.
Mark Rowland, Chief Executive at Mental Health Foundation, said:
“The UK is on the verge of ending the 20-year experiment by which social media companies have had unfettered open access to our young people. This has had disastrous consequences, contributing to a 47% increase in young people experiencing mental health harm in England since 2007. Protecting children from social media’s dangers is vital to tackling this crisis.
"We support social media giants being required to adopt a Safety by Design approach, in which they must prove their safety before going to market – not after the harm has occurred. This would bring social media into line with other potentially dangerous products.
“We also support a film-like system of age ratings per social media site, reflecting each platform’s unique nature. YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram, to name a few, each come with their own risks and mitigations, and any safety model must reflect this.
“We should never have allowed tech giants to sell their increasingly psychologically damaging and addictive products to young people without rigorous safety regulation. Just as with tobacco before it, we are now seeing worrying health effects among the victims of these products, while platforms continue to make huge profits. Now is the time to rebalance that equation.
“Parents, educators, health services, and most importantly young people themselves, urgently need government intervention that addresses concerns in this area while recognising and protecting the important and sometimes positive role social media can play. The UK government is right to carefully consider the options before them, and we urge them to act definitively while prioritising the safety of our young people. Too many lives have been blighted by these poorly regulated products that have had free access to children."