Social media has connected us all, but it has to be controlled
support of Deanne Ferguson, her local Labour candidate for Morley and Outwood.
Last week, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told tech giants “more action is urgently needed” and that it was “appallingly easy” to access suicide material online.
A report into school funding by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published in March 2017 showed successive cuts had severely affected mental health school support services.
Last week, it was reported that social media algorithms have been steering teenagers to graphic images of self-harm and posts about suicide within a minute of them searching for terms related to depression.
A Google spokesman said: “We wish to send our deepest condolences to Daniel’s family. When people in need turn to the internet for advice and search for queries relating to suicide, we show the Samaritans’ 24-hour helpline number to connect people who are depressed, suicidal or in distress with the help and advice they need.” SOCIAL media has become a major, unavoidable part of everyday life.
Recent figures from Ofcom indicate that 70 per cent of
12- to 15-year-olds have a profile on social media, while the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reported in 2015 that 95 per cent of 15-year-olds in the UK used it before or after school.
Social media clearly has some huge benefits. Yet if the reaction to this week’s report from my committee, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, has taught us anything, it’s that there are growing concerns about its effects on our children.
Throughout our inquiry we have heard from a range of experts about social media’s potential risks to health, safety and wellbeing. It is important to highlight that witnesses indicated that social media was not the cause of this damage to young people – but rather that it enabled “a large degree of amplification and facilitation”.
This includes a range of risks to physical health. Logging on early in the morning and late at night can disrupt sleep patterns and focus.
This could lead to detrimental consequences, such as lower grades or less social interaction “in real life”.
More worryingly, we also heard of the risks posed when children are online, often away from the supervision of a parent, carer or teacher.
We heard evidence during the inquiry of some of the risks that young people face when accessing social media, including sexual exploitation, bullying and grooming.
For example, the NSPCC told us that experiences of abuse can have a “devastating and longlasting impact on children’s mental health and wellbeing”.
They told us how children became “more likely to suffer from a range of long-term mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, self-harm, conduct disorders, and a higher risk of suicide”.
Live streaming of abuse was another major problem raised during our inquiry. Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner, described figures produced by the NSPCC on the scale of the problem as “horrific”.
Another measure to consider is referrals to other services.
Emily Cherry from Barnardo’s was clear that one of the trends the charity is beginning to see is children being groomed by criminal gangs, for both sexual exploitation and criminal exploitation.
The percentage of referrals for child sexual abuse online has also risen from 20 per cent to 75 per cent.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) also reported that the referrals it had received from the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children had “increased by
700 per cent over the last four years”.
The NCA expected this upward trend to continue “as the volume of internet data continues to grow”.
The response from social media companies to this issue has simply not been good enough.
They have refused to share data with researchers who are keen to examine patterns of use and their effects.
This is unhelpful and unfair to those who may be at real risk.
I have also heard first-hand from some smaller sharing platforms that technology exists to target problematic materials and remove them from these sites, making it easier to find out who is sharing this content and to what extent.
It is clear to me and the committee that social media companies should be subject to a formal legal duty of care to their users.
And they must be willing to share data with researchers.
The Government must act swiftly to put an end to the current “standards lottery” approach.
We must see an independent, statutory regulator established as soon as possible.
‘Abuse can have a devastating impact on children’s mental health and wellbeing’