Night ban on social media alerts to children

SOCIAL media firms face fines of up to £18 million if they disturb children with notifications and alerts at night or during the school day under plans being considered by the information commissioner. The move comes as research shows more than half of parents believe smartphones and other digital media are to blame for their children’s disrupted sleep.

Elizabeth Denham, the commissioner, is drawing up a statutory code to target strategies used by the firms to keep children online, including the timing of notifications and auto-play.

Among the proposals is a ban on the social media giants posting messages, notifications or alerts that disturb children’s sleep at night or distracts them at school. To counter the addictive nature of the technology, the firms could also be forced to set auto-play, notifications, buzzes, read receipts and alerts to “off ” every time a child logs on.

The plans have been submitted by 5Rights, a charity founded by Baroness Beeban Kidron, the filmmaker, which has been working with the commissioner and was instrumental in securing government and all-party support.

It could include automatic timeouts to limit children’s use of social media, save buttons so they do not have to stay online to complete a game and “streak holidays” to escape features requiring daily attention to keep up with friends.

In a blog, Ms Denham warned the companies that strategies used by sites and apps to “personalise a child’s experience to encourage them to stay online longer” are under the spotlight. “We have to make sure the code is designed with children at its heart,” she said.

The code, which is open for consultation until Wednesday, is designed to ensure firms comply with the Digital Economy Act, which is enforced with fines of up to £18million or 4 per cent of global turnover. The research by paediatricians at Michigan University found 43per cent of parents said their teenage children, aged 13 to 18, suffered sleeplessness, with half (56 per cent) of those blaming phones and other digital media for the disruption.

Sarah Clark, researcher, said poor sleep not only affected educational performance but could also lead to mental ill health, including depression, and to obesity: “Inadequate or disrupted sleep can have long-lasting health effects that go beyond moodiness and irritability for teens.”

Baroness Kidron said the “epidemic of sleeplessness” to which the compulsive nature of technology was contributing was one of today’s biggest issues.

“If you ask any teacher what is the problem in their class, they will say the kids are coming to school tired,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “If you ask parents, it’s about pulling the device out of children’s hands in the night.”

The charity proposes traffic light style labelling to tell parents and children which products were most addictive and which offered the best privacy.

Firms would be required to delete all information when a child left a site.