‘I don’t want the normal to be that we need to get our children a smartphone’
Parents across Cambridgeshire have shared fears for their children as they call for social media to be banned for under 16s. The group Smartphone Free Childhood has sent more than 2500 emails to their local MPs in Cambridgeshire, urging them to support legislation that would raise the minimum age for social media users to 16.
Viola Newbury, who works with children and is a parent of two, said: “I don’t want the normal to be that we need to get our children a smartphone. I want the choice to be normal.” The mother-of-two explained how she was “seeing the affect on concentration and happiness” in some of her students, caused by the use of phones and social media and how “their ability to concentrate was just disappearing.”
Amy Ruffell, Smartphone Free Childhood lead for Cambridgeshire, who is a parent of two young children, and contacted a local MP about her concerns said: “We have reached a point where we really do need to question why we’ve slept walked into this situation where our children are on platforms that have tons of problematic content on them.
“Children need to have guardrails around them if they are going to step into that world [of social media], just as they do in real life when we protect them from harms that may be around them.”
She explained how it occurred to her that children are becoming more and more grown up, but are yet still children. Adding that, “most of that sort of knowingness and seeming maturity comes from from being online and operating in adult spaces and whilst that’s positive in one sense, there’s many more negatives that come from that, because these spaces are not designed for them, and it can rob them a bit of their innocence.”
Just 36 hours after the campaign began, parents across the county sent over 1000 emails to their local MP, and now a week into the campaign, the number is over 2500. This is part of a nationwide surge that saw more than 200,000 letters from Smartphone Free Childhood supporters sent to MPs across the UK.
Liz Gooster, a parent to an eight-year-old, who also backs the legislation, said: “It is not about not having technology, but just doing it in a way that is beneficial for them.” She describes the current social media situation as a “crisis point” but she feels “hopeful about it, and that we can make a mentally healthier environment for our kids.”
Liz continued to explain that it is “about protecting a vulnerable group in our society at an age when they are really susceptible to influences.”
The letters urge MPs to support a proposed amendment, currently before the House of Lords, to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. If the amendment is successful, the Bill will return to the House of Commons for a further vote.
Cambridgeshire parents have contacted MPs from across the political spectrum, including Daniel Zeichner, Ian Sollom, Charlotte Cane, Pippa Heylings, and Ben Obese-Jecty to underline their concern about children’s online safety.
In Australia, legislation raising the minimum age for social media users to 16 came into force in December, making it the first country to introduce a national, enforceable age limit. Prime Minister Keir Starmer indicated that he would be open to following in Australia’s footsteps.
Since then, other countries have begun moving in the same direction. France, Spain, Denmark, Norway, and Malaysia are advancing proposals to strengthen age limits and parental consent for children online.
In response to the correspondence, Ian Sollom, MP for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire said: “The Liberal Democrats have long raised the alarm on social media harms as a public health crisis. Over the past week, I have received hundreds of messages from local parents who are concerned about the long-term consequences of social media on their children’s safety and mental wellbeing. As a parent myself, I absolutely share these concerns.
He added: “We have announced our amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that calls for a ban on harmful social media for under 16s. Our amendment proposes film-style age ratings of up to 18 for the most harmful platforms, and a default rating of 16 for social media.
“Our age-rating model, while protecting children from the worst of the online world and providing an incentive for platforms to remove addictive algorithms and harmful content, ensures that children can continue to use sites like Wikipedia for schoolwork, or WhatsApp to stay connected to family and friends. Both of these could be age-gated from children under a blanket under-16 ban like the one proposed by the Conservatives. We also think it’s important that children are able to access online crisis services such as Childline forums which are caught up in Online Safety Act user-to-user services.”
Daniel Zeichner, MP for Cambridge said: “There are very real concerns about how social media and screen time are affecting the lives of children across the country, and I discuss this frequently on my regular visits to schools in Cambridge.
“I recognise the important concerns raised in the Smartphone Free Childhood Campaign, and I agree with the Prime Minister that more needs to be done to protect children. The Government is rightly looking at a range of options which will build upon existing measures such as the Online Safety Act.”
Pippa Heyling, MP for South Cambridgeshire said: “”I have received hundreds of emails from parents in South Cambridgeshire concerned about the effects of social media on children. As an Internet Watch Foundation champion, I am concerned about the harm which it can cause. I and the Liberal Democrats believe that social media should be made much safer for children and have called for a film-style age rating approach.
“Just as films and video games have different ratings reflecting the risk they pose to children, social media platforms have different levels of risk too, and so their minimum age limits should reflect this. This is a proposal and amendment that the NSPCC support as opposed to an outright ban – which is effectively a ban on harmful social media.”
Joe Ryrie, co-founder of Smartphone Free Childhood said: “”The scale and speed of this response shows just how strongly parents and the wider public feel about this issue.
“Families from every part of the country are saying the same thing: childhood needs stronger protections from global platforms built to maximise attention and profit – and parents need greater support from the government.”
Smartphone Free Childhood is a grassroots movement to bring families together to delay smartphones and social media. According to the campaign, in under two years, since the launch of the WhatsApp group, it has grown into a movement of over 400,000 families in the UK.
