Welcome back to the To Be a Boy podcast with Elliot Ray and
Jodie Brady. This episode is sponsored by
Coral Kids, the UK's leading after school nanny marketplace.
There's a huge conversation happening right now, not just
amongst parents, but in governments, school and the
media across the world. The question is being asked,
should social media be banned for under sixteens?
Australia has already passed the legislation, Spain and Portugal
are considering similar moves and here in the UK the debate
has reached government consultation.
For many young people, social media is central to friendship,
identity, status and belonging. But it can also bring extreme
and widely damaging downsides, such as increased bullying, poor
mental health and isolation. And as parents, we are left
trying to work out how to keep our children safe online while
helping them thrive offline. So everyone agrees on the goal.
We want to keep our children safe, resilient and well.
But there's deep disagreement about the solution.
We'll be having a conversation with Kanishka Narayan, the
online Safety minister, about what the government is
considering and the consultation that is currently live.
First, we are joined by two leading voices with very
different perspectives for an open and honest conversation
about how we move forward as a country and as parents, how we
navigate all of this. We have Sonia Livingstone from
the NSC who is against the ban and Doctor Susie Davis from
Papaya Talks and Smartphone Free Childhood who is in favour of a
ban. So we are.
Super excited for this conversation.
We have Sonia and Susie here who are going to take us through
their opinions and their views on whether we should have a
social media ban for under 16 in the UK.
So let's get into it. I'm going to ask you both to
introduce yourselves so the audience know they are listening
to some real experts and who have been doing the work and
have informed opinions. So Sonia, who are you?
What do you do? Hi, I'm a professor of social
psychology at the London School of Economics.
I lead a small research centre called Digital Features for
Children with the Five Rights Foundation and I've spent years
doing research directly with young people, sometimes young
people specifically with mental health problems and with their
families and at school. And my focus is always on how
the digital environment is always changing and always in
need of our attention. Incredible.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Sonia. Susie, over to you.
Hi, I'm Doctor Susie Davies, I'm an NHSGP and my story really
began 8 years ago when I took a job at student Health services
at Bristol University and I saw the really poor mental health of
students suffering from insomnia, acting disorders, self
harm and that year we lost. Sadly in 2018 Bristol lost eight
students to suicide. So I became personally and
profoundly impacted by the poor mental health of young people
and got really curious as to why and started to see very, very
often this relationship between poor tech habits and young
people mental health. And at exactly the same moment,
my daughter who was in year 6, was asking me for a smartphone.
So I gathered a community of parents to delay the first
smartphone together and we set up the charity Papaya, which is
parents against phone addiction in young adolescents.
So I've been working on that for eight years with lots and lots
of young people hearing their views and helping young people
make an informed choice about their relationship with tech.
And I've also written a book for teenagers called The Healthy
Selfie to again help them develop that healthy
relationship with themselves and their technical devices.
Amazing. So we should listen to you both
because you've got a lot of knowledge to give us.
So opening statements if you like.
Should social media be banned for under sixteens?
Yes and no. And why?
Sonia, let's hear from you first.
What do you think? So my going to argue for no,
social media should not be banned.
But that doesn't mean that I think social media is great.
And I think my argument is really founded on listening to
children and young people over the years and trying to
understand how important for them the digital world is, how
much for them they feel themselves to be the kind of The
Pioneers and those who are growing up in a world which is
not going away, which they want to understand and which they
think many adults don't grasp very well.
Clearly, what research shows, and I could cite lots of it, is
that there are lots of harms linked to social media and there
are lots of benefits. So my argument is not everything
is fine in the world of social media, and actually many things
are getting worse in the world of social media.
Still, young people, when we see the polls are generally saying
it's an important place for them, where they get their,
where they see their friends first and foremost, where they
kind of keep up with the world and what's happening in it and
where they relax, have fun, gain help, find people who kind of
get them, who understand them. And we have, I think what's
really important to understand is over the years that we've all
pivoted, many people have pivoted to social media.
We have kind of redefined our society outside the world of
social media. And I think that's especially to
do with the pandemic. So we do not as a society
provide a lot of flexibility and opportunities for children and
young people to meet their friends outside school in the
evenings on a wet February afternoon when we don't want to
let them go out. We have cut back on youth
spaces. We don't welcome young people at
bus stops and in in shopping malls.
We have pushed them to social media and at the same time we
have in this country done something super important, which
is to bring in a number of pieces of regulation which are
not sufficient, not completely implemented, but have taken an
enormous amount of effort and debate.
And my priority is that we really make the regulation
stick. We really make sure that we have
the evidence base to know what is working and what is not
working and that we recognize and provide the support for very
vulnerable young people that they need, which is not going to
come just by turning them away from their friends and cutting
them off information. It's going to come by properly
funding our mental health services.
It's going to come by having a clear understanding of where
some young people are at risk and advising parents, but most
of all of regulating the big tech companies that are pushing
the problems, also providing many of the benefits that young
people really. So I could say more about kind
of findings and research, but maybe that gives you a sense
that I'm not, I'm not all for it for social media.
I'm super worried about some of the things that are happening,
but I don't see that just turning it off is going to
provide young people with the world they need, that gives them
the connections that they that are vital for them to thrive.
Thanks, Sonia. And we've got we're going to get
into a lot of the points that you've made there, especially
resonate with the kind of children not being in the real
world. We pushed them online.
I definitely resonate with that in my own life and my with my
own family. So thank you so much.
Susie question, should social media be banned for under
sixteens, yes or no? And why?
What do you think? So yes, I am going to argue for
raising the age of digital consent to 16.
And the reason for that is thinking about the context in
which social media is actually set at 13.
It wasn't experts who set this age.
It hadn't been well thought through.
It was actually from a 1998 data privacy law set in America as
the minimum age that tech companies can sell and harvest
our young people's data without parental consent.
Now Fast forward 30 years and the Internet is a completely
different place to it was when this law was set.
There wasn't even social media set 30 years ago.
There were no addictive algorithms and certainly the
terms cyber bullying, sextortion and grooming hadn't even been
coined. And then let's think about the
Internet now that our children are inhabiting.
And this is where the problem lies.
It is addictive by design. Tech companies have invested
billions of dollars making social media as addictive as
possible. And I think we can all see that
ourselves. You know, we can start scrolling
on our phones and you can lose 20-30 minutes without even and
thinking or noticing. But our young people are losing
on average 2 to 4 hours every day to social media alone.
And the minority of them are losing 5 hours or more.
But it's not just the time that they're losing.
And often young people tell me they're actually horrified when
they realize they've lost the hours they should be revising to
their phones. It's not just the time, it's the
content that they're viewing. We know the online comparison is
making young people less happy with their own lives and it's
causing them to feel less satisfied, lower their mood and
suffer from more anxiety. There's also the impact on their
sleep. Preteens are losing on average
one night's sleep per week to social media.
I would feel awful if I was losing that much sleep every
week. They're exposed to pornography
with the average 12 year old being exposed to pornography for
the first time was doing their homework.
And the idea for me that this exposure is worth the risk for
freedom online for both adults and children is something that
as a parent and and health professional, I actually can't
comprehend. And then also there's the
predatory risk, which is becoming much, much greater with
grooming and sextortion having an eightfold increase in just
one year from 22 to 23. And it's getting worse all the
time. I also want to just mention the
context of being a 13 year old. Self esteem we know is lowest in
early adolescence. So just at the moment, young
people are more self aware, struggling with their own self
identity. They're being exposed to this
content. Their prefrontal cortex, the bit
of their brain responsible for decision making and impulse
control, is not yet fully developed.
So the real question is, is the current age of 13 adequate?
When we think about the exposure our young people have to harm
and their development mental ability, and I think the answer
clearly is no, that our young people, we just need to give
them more time, more time to develop, more time to be more
time to enjoy the real world. And delaying social media to 16
would give them would give them that.
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I can feel my body tensing up when you're talking about the
amount of time lost to social media every day.
You know, when you put it like that, it's really compelling.
Let's talk about mental health. So it's mental health evidence.
Sonia, I've got a question for you.
So we've had years of data linking heavy social media used
to anxiety, depression and self harm.
I know from speaking to many parents, given this information
we have about mental health, they feel like banning it is a
no brainer because it's harmful. And if something is that
harmful, it feels right to just take it away.
So given that evidence around social media, what are your
thoughts on whether a ban would work in regards to kind of
addressing those issues? I think we should come to the
question of whether a ban would work as a kind of separate
thing. I, I think the point I'd like to
question in what you just said is how much the social media,
the time spent on social media is the cause of the mental
health problems that young people are facing.
So we've had lots of studies and I don't want to kind of argue
about, you know, we can argue about the, the kind of insurance
and outs of the different studies, but my summary would be
that the, the kind of causal direction goes both ways.
So there's evidence that if young people use more social
media, overall their mental health is a little worse.
But there are kind of UPS and, you know, there are benefits as
well. It's a kind of a small finding,
but also that the young people with mental health difficulties
tend to tend to social media. Maybe they don't have friends,
maybe they can't talk to parents because they've got problems
that they want to research. And the algorithms, which can be
pernicious and which I absolutely think should be
regulated, then can push them down a problematic rabbit hole.
So all of that is to say that the role of social media in
young people's mental health difficulties is, I would say,
kind of modern. And there are other causes of
mental health problems that our young people are facing, of
which the number one, according to the Good Childhood Report,
actually is academic pressure. And I'm amazed that we don't
have podcasts on how to reduce the academic pressures on our
children in a world in which the their future is really
uncertain, their financial, their confidence again to earn
enough money. You know, there are a lot of
pressures on young people. The pandemic made everything
worse. It introduced a lot of family
conflict, family difficulties and worries about the cost of
living and so on. So I'm just really concerned
that we somehow centre on social media as like the presenting
problem, the thing in front of us, a child's looking at a
screen, and think that by banning it, we're going to solve
all of those problems in children's lives because we're
not. And I would love us to broaden
the conversation, say if we're worried about our young people's
mental health, which we should be, let us think about the
different things that we can be doing.
Funding mental health support services, as I'm sure and Susie
would agree, has, has really crashed and is really a priority
because we have young people waiting on the waiting list so
long. So yes, social media is part of
the mix. Is it the answer to everything
and it's banning it the answer to everything?
Absolutely not. And that's why I want a broader
conversation that kind of really centres young people and their
needs in a, in a what's become a bit of a kind of polarized, too
polarized debate. There will be no simple
solutions. What do you think?
Is social media the cause of this poor mental health or is it
a chicken leg situation? What comes first?
Well, I would say as AGP, what I am seeing every single day is
young people in mental health crisis and I can often directly
attribute it to their social media use.
So just yesterday saw a 16 year old who had had hate crime
online. She'd actually had to move out
of her family home. She was on the cusp of of
homelessness. She was severely, severely
depressed. Now obviously society is complex
and I agree with Sonia, there are many problems.
But our young people's access to social media is something we can
fix and we can change. And This is why as parents and
healthcare professionals, we feel so passionately about it
because every single day we are trying to fix people who, who
are broken. And I would rather see money
invested in preventative services than spending all our
resources on cams trying to fix young people who are broken.
So of course, it's complex. Of course society is a is a hard
place for young people to fry. But the thing that has changed,
or one of the main things that has changed in the last decade
is that our young people are losing 2 to 4 hours every single
day. They're spending that time
comparing themselves to others online.
They're being exposed to horrific content.
I see young people with PTSD, with trauma from the content
that they've seen online. As I've mentioned, they're
losing sleep and sleep is the foundation of good mental
health. And I've met young people who've
managed to cut back their social media time, who've managed to
replace it with positive activities.
It is about replacement and they have been so much better.
You know, I can see them beaming at me as they come into their GP
surgeries and you know, doctor, I did it, I deleted TikTok.
I've been to the park for my friends and I feel so much
better. And that was obviously that's a
really oversimplistic view, but day in, day out, I'm seeing the
problem and I think it does work both ways.
It is cause and effect. But actually both are equally
worrying, aren't they? If it's causing the mental
health problems or if it's exacerbating pre-existing mental
health problems, Both are damaging our young people and
our young people need every little bit of help that they can
get to thrive in today's age. And I think we are not helping
them by giving them unlimited access to these harmful
products. Can I come back?
So I think I absolutely hear you, Susie, about the pain that
walks in through your consulting room.
And I think there are many young people who are struggling with
all kinds of things, including their social media use.
I do not spend all my time with young people, but quite
frequently I go into schools, I go into homes, I talk to young
people. And I don't just talk to those
who are in extremists. I talk to those who are don't
need to go to the Doctor Who are fine, who are getting on with
their school work, who are happy in their in their daily life.
And so I hear a wide range and that's I think what the research
hears from when also in surveys, you know, we survey a
representative sample of the population.
Somehow we need a way of thinking about those who are in
extremists and the many young people that I talked to who say
they've been to a bit of a sticky patch and they've figured
it out for themselves and now they're OK.
Or they have their particular interests and they kind of know
how to play the algorithm and find their friends and talk to
their friends about whatever it is and not lose hours or lose
enormous amounts of sleep. So I find young people, I talk
to young people who in the main, and this is what research tells
us, the majority, so hard to weigh the majority against the
vulnerable similarity. But I hear from very many young
people who feel that it's a difficult world in many ways and
it's a world full of opportunities in many ways.
And by the age of 16 they are finding their way.
So I would not have very young children on social media.
I actually think if we could enforce that age of 13, that
would be good. We haven't managed to, but if we
did, that would be good. But in those adolescent years,
that's when young people are the agents who feel that they are
finding their way in their digital world and very many of
them are managing it. And they don't want to have that
kind of denied them that They feel that this is a resilience
that they have, they have gained.
And they don't call it losing 2 to 4 hours a day.
They admit that they lose half an hour or a bit of time to the
algorithms, but they also think they're up to date with the
news. They're in touch with their
friends, they've got the latest funny meme, they know what the a
good joke is to share the next day in school, and maybe they've
watched some YouTube videos about how to solve their maths
problems. That they're struggling with.
That's the mix that they tell me about.
Can I say I just think that's an idealistic view of what young
people are experiencing online. We could debate about this, but
I also think this is not a minority of people who are
struggling with their mental health.
I don't think there's an adult listening to this podcast who
doesn't know a young person in mental health crisis, whether
it's your own child and niece or nephew or child you teach at
school. And that is something a decade
ago I couldn't have imagined. Saying something is not working
for our children, and I truly believe it's correlated to what
they're exposed to on the Internet.
On the Internet, that we could discuss that one all day.
We'll move. On just separately to mental
health that my kids are 10 and 12 and they do sometimes go on
YouTube and more recently they've been saying things like
I don't want to go to school because education is pointless.
It doesn't teach me anything that is going to be useful to me
when I leave school. And they've clearly got that
messaging from videos they've watched on social media or from
friends at school that watch something on social media.
That's one of the reasons why I think banning social media until
the age of 16 could be beneficial is not necessarily
that I think it's going to be bad for their mental health.
It's some of these messages that they're being drip fed that I
think a bit could be really damaging to them long term.
What would your thoughts on that be Sonia?
Social media, YouTube, it's got everything on it and young
people are finding all kinds of different content.
All I can say is when we have the representative surveys that
ask every, you know, every child has a fair chance of being
included in, rather than just those who could have put up the
hand and say I've got a problem. Then we get an enormous range of
experience and it is not idealistic.
There are many young people who say they are turning to YouTube
to help them with their homework or to see the news or to know
what is happening in their their neighborhood or just to have
something funny to relax with because you know I that is what
they value. There are many young people who
are using the different platforms in such a diversity of
ways that I really, I think it does a disservice to young
people to put them all in the one box, to say they're having a
common experience. There are gamers, there are
coders, there are fans of particular kinds of music.
There are those who are trying to kind of create something.
There are those who just want to chill out for an hour or two
instead of watching telly with mum and dad, which was never
actually always wonderful. Children live very diversely.
I just don't see how we can put them in one box and say the
experience is common for everyone and therefore the
solution is the same. Thank you.
This is really good. Let's move on to the darker
Internet risk. So, Susie, a lot of people who
are kind of against the ban, they say that if we ban social
media, so a lot of the mainstream apps, you know, like
TikTok, etcetera. If we ban those, then we'll just
push young people onto more unregulated parts of the
Internet, parts of the Internet where potentially the the
content is worse that we don't even know about.
And that actually banning social media in that way could just
make it worse because young people will still have phones
and they'll still have access to platforms and communication with
strangers and all that stuff. So what do you think about that
dark Internet risk that that could potentially come with a
social media? Ban.
Thank you. It's a really good question and
I think what we need to look about is how that ban actually
functions, how it works. So I would want to see a ban
based on the features, function and usage of social media rather
than specific sites. So actually you look at what are
the features that are unsafe for under sixteens like the infinite
scroll, persuasive design, geolocation.
And actually you have a dynamic ban where sites can move in and
out because of the features they've got.
So this would mean all of those lesser known sites would be
included in the ban. If they have their wiring
features. It would also include wiring
platforms like Roblox and Discord.
It would also force social media, but if they wanted to
have access to under 16 year olds, they would have to
completely redesign the features, the persuasive design
features of their social media apps to make them safer.
So secondly, if we watch Australia, we have an experiment
in progress. There's currently no evidence
that children are moving underground, although there is
evidence both here and in Australia more children
downloading VPNs which are virtual private networks.
So I think for a ban to work, we have to look at also banning
VPNs in the under eighteens to, to coincide with the ban.
And also I think parental support for this is absolutely
key. A recent You Gov poll said 74%
of parents were in support of a ban.
So if you've got 3/4 of parents working with the government to
try and get their children off social media, it's going to
change the societal norm and it's going to make make it much
easier. The ban empowers parents.
It's actually a huge gift to parents because it takes away
that I've got to give it to my child because everyone else has
got it. So it is complex.
I agree, a ban on its own is not enough.
We need to work with parents, we need to work with the students,
with the children, and we need to look at access to VPNs at the
same time to avoid that problem. Any thoughts on that, Sonia, in
regards to the darker Internet risk?
Is that something that you've been considering?
I think we, I absolutely want to see the, the published results
of the Australia experiment in progress.
My understanding of the early results emerging is that there
was a initial surge in use of VPNs and that's that's tailed
off and that there is absolutely a surge to using turning to
Roblox and to Discord and to a number of other platforms that
weren't included in the in the banned list.
So looking at that from young people's point of view, they're
looking for somewhere to go and perhaps like water, they will
find it. I don't actually think they'll
go in enormous numbers on the dark web.
I think they are more sensible and that they too are cautious
and self protective. But I do think they will find
places to connect with their friends to have fun.
And that's our societal dilemma. How are we going to provide
those places for young people when we are so scared to let
them, let them go out? A survey of 70,000 British
children in the last month said 86% do not want to ban.
We can say children don't know what's good for them or we can
think what is it that 86% of children this is aged from 7 to
16? What are they telling us about
social media? I think many of them are
figuring out their way. Do they want regulation?
Absolutely yes. Do they want the addictive and
persuasive design features dealt with?
Absolutely yes. Do they want the worst excesses
of the content taken out? Yes.
Do they want a good place to go when something goes wrong?
Yes. You know, they're not.
They're not daft, but they don't want to be excluded.
They want the platforms to be regulated, not them to be
restricted themselves. So part part of me in thinking
about this thinks about social media, but thinks wider than
just social media and thinks more about kind of smartphones
overall and just the fact that we are losing kids to the screen
and the scroll, whatever the app is.
And part of me is thinking is, is social media the problem?
Are we too focused on social media here is just our
relationship, our relationships, but our children's relationships
with our phones actually more of the issue.
And Sonia, you touched on it earlier around, you know, if we
take social media away, how are we going to support those
children doing things in the real world?
So Susie, a question to you. Do you think a social media ban
actually solves the issues around mental health, isolation,
self harm, etcetera? Or is it a wider problem around
addiction to screen time, addiction to phones and the way
we have socialized young people out of society?
And how do we encourage other things?
More sport, more community, more real world connection?
What are your thoughts on on the core of the problem here?
Is it social media or is it just kind of phones and smartphones?
I would agree with all of those points, yes.
You know, it really is about the phone because it's not a phone,
is it? It's a any computer in our
pocket with most of us 24/7. The phone is obviously the
mechanism with which young people can download these
harmful and addictive apps that we talk about.
So I don't just worry about social media.
But as you said, you know, we live in a world where it's so
easy to disconnect. You can do your shopping online.
You can even contact your doctor online.
You can book an Uber. Life is just too convenient.
And I think children, they desperately need friction to
grow. They need challenge to develop
and they need failure to grow resilience.
But you can't learn that from the 2 dimensions of a screen in
your bedroom. You know, my daughter keeps
getting at the bus stop without any money.
She keeps having to art, you know, negotiate with the bus
driver to let her on the bus. You know, that is about learning
resilience. Or I ended up in Munich last
week. My phone wasn't working and I
had to speak, practice a little bit of German, speak to some
people to find my way out to to a hotel.
These are really great life skills that you do not learn if
you have an app. My head could have been down on
Google Maps. I wouldn't have met some lovely
people who'd guided me around their city.
And you know, we've seen that 13 to 17 year old colds, according
to the World Health Organization, are the loneliest
in society. You know, they are really,
really struggling. As humans, we need to connect.
We need to belong and we need to find purpose in people and as
humans. And the greatest irony I find is
that actually big tech social media is now offering the
solution to loneliness in the form of chat box and AI
companions. And you know, we let get so much
from the daily interactions of life.
So the question is, is the phone the problem?
Yes, but 95% of it is about the social media.
And if we have if we have a band, I would go further.
Let's take off the web browser. Let's make sure our children
don't have VPNs. And then let's focus on
restoring childhood because children are 20% of our
population, but they're 100% of our future and they deserve, you
know, the best childhood they they can have.
They deserve parks, huge clubs, time outside.
They deserve parents actually who are happy to let them go out
and let them take some risks because that is what childhood
is about. That is what our children need,
but they're not going to find it whilst they're still glued to
their devices. Yeah, it takes me back to many
years as a young person being on the train with no money.
I'm just having to find my way through the barriers, you know?
But yeah, many, many years doing that and having to hustle.
And I agree, you learn so much just being out in the real world
and having to negotiate and make your way.
So Sonia, I know you kind of you kind of agree, agree on this.
This is a point that we agree on.
I think that we need to create more spaces for young people
outside. I think we agree on children
needing greater freedoms, children needing greater
resources being provided for them.
Children live incredibly local lives.
You know, a bus journeys probably as far as they go by
themselves. They need a park nearby, they
need resources nearby, they need youth clubs nearby and so on.
And I'm still not going to agree on the idea that it's the phone
or the social media. So I think it's the business
model of big Tech. And I think 2 points then that I
want to bring into this conversation.
Firstly, if we just remove children from the digital world,
then Big Tech will be free to go its merry way.
Children are the, at the moment, the kind of very visible reason
why Big Tech is being brought to heel, being brought to
attention. Fights that we're seeing from
our regulators and from our governments in many countries
around the world with the support of parents and the
public, are the nearest we're coming to reining them in and
regulating that business model that is so predatory and so much
putting profit before the best interests of children.
If we take children, if we take smartphones out of their hands
and we take the children off the platforms, they will just carry
on doing what they're doing, which is a problem actually for
everybody, including children, because this is this is still
tech in the hands of parents. This is still tech in the hands
of the predators and the those who will still know where
children are. We can't remove children from
this world. And also, we will just wipe out
all the benefits that we do genuinely think are part of a
digital world, an information resource for everybody, enhanced
educational learning opportunities, ways for children
with disabilities to overcome and, you know, access some of
the constraints that society imposes around them.
Where is our media and our kind of entertainment and leisure
world, You know, so we can take children away.
We will leave the digital world in a really problematic
direction. And I think we're focusing on
the problem today, which is the smartphone and the social media.
But tomorrow it's not going to be about screens.
It's going to be about sensing environments.
It's going to be about AI informed objects in, in our
homes and already in our schools.
We're, we're dealing with the almost yesterday's problem and
all of that AI and AI enabled technologies that we're building
in children's environments are the same companies and the same
predatory business model. And that is why we have to keep
saying we need that to change and serve the interests of
society, including children, not just try to kind of put children
in some cotton wool space outside the world because the
world it will still reach them. And the world right now is is is
very much being redefined by big tech.
Can I just add in? I think the only way we're going
to change big tech is by really hitting their pockets.
And this feature based ban is the only thing that I think is
strong enough to force them to change their design models.
Ofcom and their fines and regulation hasn't got enough
power. It's like pennies to big tech
the fines that they're being given.
And so I think unless we force them to change their model,
they've had a decade of harm, of court battles, of all sorts of
negative publicity and they are making minimal concessions.
For example, a teen Instagram account, a stranger can no
longer contact a child. That is the sort of concessions
that Meta are prepared to make. And I don't think that is going
to change because of the money involved.
This isn't about wrapping up our kids in cotton wool, is actually
the opposite. It's about taking the cotton
wool off and getting them back out into the real world.
And it's the screens that are stopping them do it.
I had a young boy in a workshop I ran just last week and
actually he was on, he was gaming.
He had lost all interest in the outside world.
And at the end of my session with him he just said please
help me, I need help. I want to stop gaming but I
can't now. If I'd asked him at the
beginning of the session he would have said gaming and
social media are my life, I don't have anything else that I
do, I don't want anything else and I completely am against a
ban. But just by spending time with
him and asking, questioning his beliefs and how he spent his
time just getting him to think about his use of tech meant that
he did a full 360 in just a one hour group session and we were
able to help him. That is not the life he wanted
to lead. I don't believe he was making
autonomous choices with his time.
He was a addicted to gaming and the gaming was controlling him,
not him controlling the gaming. And these platforms are so
unsafe for young people that without really huge safeguards
in place, a generation of children are being lost.
That's, I mean as a mother of boys, I can attest to that being
a problem. Most mothers boys that I speak
to say they have a real issue with their kids being addicted
to gaming and I'm sure some parents of girls also have the
same problem. It seems to be very prevalent
amongst boys. But this ban wouldn't affect
that, would it? Like that's separate issue which
is a big issue. It can include some of the
gaming apps like Roblox or multiplayer games.
Discord is particularly difficult with the private chat
rooms they go into. So I think the ban could
certainly clean up gaming. You know, we don't, again, we
don't want to take our children off.
You know, my son has got an Xbox.
We don't want to take our children off gaming completely.
What we want is a safer where they're not exposed to strangers
and it's much less addictive by design, so just a much cleaner
version of what we've got now. It's not about taking it all the
way, It's about giving them back.
It's about giving them back their three choice.
You know, it's about giving our young people their voice and
their autonomy back with their time and how they spend it.
I'd quite like to go back to Snake and Tetris, it's great.
Again, Yeah, Nokia and a Game Boy.
I'd love that. That was a great time.
We didn't know. We didn't know what we had.
Yeah, it was the. Golden Era Susie, you made a
great case around the harms and many of us are aware of the
harms. And I think what you see in your
practice, some of the young people in a very extreme
circumstances, I think Sonia, have also made the case around
some of the opportunity that social media can offer.
And we've heard from parents of children with special
educational needs or children who have started businesses
online, young people who have found their community activism,
sense of belonging through social media.
So what would you say to, to that?
Isn't there, is there, is there a trade off here?
If we do cut off social media for under sixteens, are we also
taking away some of the good fits?
And is that a price that I think are we willing to pay that
price? Is it worth it?
I mean, I'd like to keep as much of the good as possible and take
away the harm, but are particularly our boys are
struggling the most with the online world.
If we've got one in seven adolescent men not in education
and not in work because our young men in particular, I think
missing out on their teen years, the importance of risk taking.
We've replaced the boys, you know, jumping into lakes and
skateboarding and staying out later.
So you know, it's a bit hair raising as a parent.
But adolescent years of boys is about taking risks and learning
how to take them safely. But now our young men, our boys,
our teenage boys are experiencing sofa culture,
living in this 2D world. They don't get to experiment
with the risks when risks don't matter, because actually online
risk is often more serious than the offline risk because it's
permanent. It leaves a permanent digital
footprint. It's resulting in many boys
being excluded from school and often unintentional or
intentional criminality. Our boys aren't learning the
social skills, the resilience, the conflict resolution that
they learn in the real world. They're missing out on the
excitement and the endorphins and the physicality of life.
And instead they're developing this dopamine deficiency state
where they're so used to the high dopamine from gaming and
social media that it's actually less easy for them to enjoy the
real world. And again, I've had particularly
young boys in workshops say, why can't I enjoy playing football
anymore? Why do I only enjoy gaming or
watching YouTube? Because they get so tolerant to
this dopamine high and their world instead is just saturated
with really horrific online content, which can be incredibly
misogynistic, which again, as parents is a great, great
concern. And the cultural shift against
women that we're seeing. They're also exposed to a huge
amounts of pornography and we're seeing a rise in gender based
violence. Now, something I see as AGP is,
which you may not have heard of, but it's a really interesting
concept, is the failure to adulthood and I.
Often see young men brought in by their mothers, they're living
at home, they're not working, they're not in employment,
they've got low mood, loss of motivation, poor concentration.
And then mums come in saying you've got to help me.
My son won't do anything. He's depressed, but actually
he's depressed because he's in his room all the time, often
spending time on pornography or gaming and not enjoying the real
world and lost the opportunities to grow up and take risks that
young men need in adolescence. So get to go back to the
question, are we cutting off our young people, particularly maybe
our young men from something valuable online?
Well, I think if we ban social media, we're actually cutting
off the very thing that's facilitating the problem, the
poor mental health and the vulnerabilities.
So again, we need to reengage our young people with society.
It's they actually need a rehabilitation, I think in
living in the real world and how to enjoy outdoor spaces and real
social life. But no, I don't think they will
suffer. I think instead we're going to
give them back the opportunities that they desperately need and
that they're really, really missing out on.
Sonia, what's your response? Do you think a ban, this
regulation would cut off some of the good bits of social media
and the activism, the opportunity, the belonging that
young, some young people find in social?
Media, just on the the research, I absolutely acknowledge that
there is evidence of young men and boys struggling, though by
and large the research shows that it's the mental health
problem is greater among girls and young women and that relates
to the digital world as well as more general and statistics.
Let's keep the attention on on both the girls and the boys.
So I might ask the question a different way around.
I might ask what is it in society that we expect we're
really talking about 13 to 15 year olds or maybe up to 15 year
olds and what kind of is our vision for them?
What do we think will help them to thrive?
And I, I don't think at any point in history, we've said we
want to keep that age group from the world as it is unfolding and
developing. What we want is that's the kind
of time for, if you like, for kind guided autonomy, which they
young people come to become. They become diverse.
They're very different. They find ways to express
themselves. They they follow very different
parts. Whenever I go into a class and
ask one question, you know, I get 25 answers.
I get as many answers as there are young people there on there
are, as we know in any year group.
When you go into a school, I don't know of, of, of year
eight, there are those who are kind of already a bit grown up
and there are those who are still kind of playing with their
Lego. And there are, you know, there's
every, there's every kind. So that's the age in which it's
the it's the stretching they're finding their path and the kind
of following their interest that we want for them.
Yes, they could do that a lot more offline than currently.
They are supported. I think we have agreed on that.
But also they want to be, some of them want to be following the
news, some of them want to be digital creators.
Some of them want to be following a kind of particular
hobby, some of them just in a time when the rest of their life
is challenging and they need to be gaming, they need to chill
out, they need to relax, they need to, they need downtime from
the pressures of school. You know, we're seeing a lot of
different things in that moment of, of being on the screens and
I just cannot see that all of it is bad.
And they will often make a defence, you know, I don't know.
Mum and dad are always on at me about my grades.
I just need to chill out with my friends.
I'm really worried about what's happening with everyone a
school. I just need a bit of quiet time.
They talk about me time, they talk about time for themselves.
And it's not all the algorithm is not all out of their control.
So we're going to take the tech out of their hands while it's
still in all of our hands. And we're going to what?
Are we going to bring back the magazines that I read when I was
a child? Yeah.
Are we great? Are we going to, I don't know.
Are we going to put children's TV back on the telly?
Yes. Maybe we are, but actually I
don't hear that debate. And you know, there is there,
there are challenges in the media world as well.
So I, I think anything that takes the argues for going
backwards and I am, you know, a little wary of kind of middle
class visions of the green space outside the house and children
playing happily. You know, we, we need to think
of the real world that children are in and the real options.
And I would start there. What is it we want for our young
adolescents? How do we provide that?
And can digital be part of that mix rather than can we keep them
away from the modern world entirely?
This has been so interesting and I think.
A lot of food for for. People ban or not, if it was
like we need a reconfiguration of how we're seeing the world of
opportunities of real world access of allowing young people
to to get on the bus, to make their way to and from school
from a from a younger age to go into shops by themselves, have
conversations with adults to access media that's not online.
And I think that's a a question for government, but a question
for us as parents as well. So to close, I want you to kind
of take away from your sides around this, the social media
ban and imagine you may have 12 year old boys.
I don't know if you do, imagine you've got a 12 year old boy.
What would you do in your family right now if you had a 12 year
old boy in regards to their relationship with their phone
and social media, in terms of them accessing social media,
using it, the conversations you're having, their phone.
What would you do right now, Susie?
So I actually do have a 13 year old son.
So this is completely relevant for me and I'm very happy to
share my story. So my 13 year old son has a
basic phone. He has no social media.
Now he would love Snapchat and we have this conversation
regularly at home. But the problem is I know, I
know the dangers of Snapchat, I know the algorithm, I know the
exposure to inappropriate content.
And my son actually also knows the problems of Snapchat because
one of his very close friends from school got suspended last
week because his snap account was hacked and AI generated porn
was sent from his account. And it's very hard to prove that
what that wasn't him, but his account was hacked.
So my son knows how horrendous Snapchat is and the real world
consequences of having snap, but he's still wants it.
So the question is, why is my son so desperate to have
Snapchat? And actually when I asked him,
he doesn't want Snapchat because he wants Snapchat.
He only wants it because his friends have got Snapchat.
It's as simple as that. He doesn't want it at all, but
his friends have it. He feels left out.
We're living, you know, we're a herd mentality as a society.
We want what other people have. So this brings full circle back
to why raising the day age of digital consent to 16 would be
such a positive thing. Because actually my son wouldn't
be the only one without Snapchat.
All his friends would be in the same boat.
They would be together, they would be able to re engage more.
He wouldn't be fighting for their time and their attention.
And actually none of his friends would have be having these
horrendous situations where they're suspended from school,
experiencing cyber bullying and a real impact on their mental
health. So actually I really want to to
give my son back his friends. I want to give them back their
in real life experiences which they do enjoy, but I want them
to have the fullness of that. But whilst I'm waiting for that
delay in social media, I'm holding firm because I know it's
harder now, but the benefits of the better mental health, better
concentration and better relationships are reached
further and later on. And I've done the same with my
almost 18 year old daughter. She didn't have social media too
much later and she is actually a shining example and pulled up a
well-rounded young person who would now advocate the
advantages of not having had social media in a phone from a
young age and she's really grateful, however difficult it
was at the time. Amazing.
So that's my story. Incredible.
Thank you, Susie. Sonia, what would you do if you
had a 12 year old boy in your house right now?
Well my 12 year old boy grew up, but when he was 12 he was a
gamer so he wasn't on social media.
He was interested in social media anyway.
Gaming. Gaming was absolutely always a
struggle because that was his thing.
He did grow up and become a valuable member of society
despite having been, you know, we had some fights when he was
12. Absolutely.
What do we do? I think we did what is the only
thing parents can do, which is we played the games with him, we
talked to him. We made sure that we were the
person that he would come to when there was trouble.
We did our best, as I think or parents do, within the capacity
to provide as rich and fuller life as we possibly could.
But we acknowledge that children at different points go through
different struggles. There was always been bullying
before cyber bullying. Some children have always been a
loner before. We have some children alone with
their phone. Childhood has never been easy
and parenthood has never been easy.
And I just come back to the fact that 12 year old boys are all
different when I go into the classroom and I talk to them
just as and the same for girls. So I think parents are doing
their best. I don't think the big tech is
helping. I don't think the government and
the regulators are working hard enough, but I don't we haven't
really got into the insurance and outs of whether a ban would
work. And I'm afraid I have no
evidence to show that a ban would work, that if we banned
anything, mental health would improve, bullying would go down,
you name it. I think still think the societal
problems are there to be addressed and that should be
where our priorities are. Round of applause for Sonia.
It's easy please. You've both been.
Brilliant. I think we need to do a Part 2
in like a year's time to see where we're at with this.
But you know, this is a very emotional conversation.
So thank you so much for bringing honesty data stories to
the conversation. You know, ultimately, we want
the same thing. We want to protect our young
people. We have slightly different views
on how we get there. But you know, I appreciate and
respect you both, so thank you so much.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you very much. That was spicy.
That was so interesting. So much to think about.
We want to hear your your thoughts.
What do you think? Are you for or against?
What side are you on? Please contact us to be a Boy
team@gmail.com. We're going to be talking loads
more about this topic, so get in touch, let us know your thoughts
and we'll see you soon.