History was made in 1923 as Nancy Astor stood to speak from the green leather benches. The first Private Member’s Bill introduced by a woman forced parliament to confront a question that may seem familiar. Should children be allowed access to something that can be fun and socially lubricating, but also addictive, toxic in high quantities and capable of shaping lifelong habits?
Astor’s bill passed: parliament banned the sale of alcohol to anyone under 18. A century later, Westminster is asking a similar question. This time it’s a social media ban for those under 16.
So far, this debate has centred on the children at greatest risk: the one in seven in England whom the World Health Organisation identifies as having problematic social media use, with symptoms including withdrawal, neglected activities and harm spilling into daily life.
But what about the other six children? Bans like the one proposed are not only a safeguarding reflex for the most vulnerable; they are broad public health interventions. What also matters is shifting the baseline for all, and helping every child in a small way. Instead we are governing by screenshot, drawn to the most clickbait cases and away from the wider reality of childhood under social media. Once we zoom out and see the fuller picture, the case for action grows stronger.
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After a Lords amendment put the issue to the chamber, MPs’ focus quickly moved to social media’s sharpest harms: grooming, sextortion, criminal exploitation, even children smoking spice were all referenced. In contrast, only once did a broader case for a ban flicker into view before the debate swung back to discuss the mental health crisis.
That same framing holds beyond parliament, too. The prominent paediatrician Hilary Cass was one of the first public figures to call for a ban. If children with nut allergies were dying after exposure, she argued, we would not tell parents to wait patiently for more evidence. It is a powerful and accurate analogy, but it pins the argument to the ground of acute risk: a small number of catastrophic outcomes demanding immediate protection.
Such outcomes are real, serious and deserve urgent attention. But they are not the whole story. Social media is not like a nut allergy, with an occasionally life-threatening impact on a small number of children. It is hard wired into the daily lives of almost every child. Its effects are broader, cumulative and more insidious than this framing allows.
If you watched a group of 13-year-olds spend their break time knocking back cans of Carling, it would be bizarre to discuss an alcohol ban only in terms of stopping some of them developing alcohol poisoning. You would want to know what it was doing to all of them. To their concentration, their relationships, their social development, their bodies.
These are much closer to the questions we should be asking, and they are questions we can answer. Social media bans have only existed for four months, since Australia became the first country to act. While the full evidence is still taking shape, we can already see enough in two directions: what children’s digital habits are doing to them, and what happens when those habits are interrupted.
Researchers at Imperial College followed 2,350 London children and found that those using social media most heavily at 11 and 12 were more likely to report depression and anxiety two years later. Sleep was one of the links they identified. Five Californian academics pushed that point further, reporting that the more teenagers used their phones, the worse they slept and the less they moved.
Take screens away, by contrast, and the outcomes begin to reverse. Results improved after phone bans at 90 different schools across Birmingham, Leicester, London and Manchester. The London School of Economics found that pupils with limited phone access were more likely to get five GCSEs, with the biggest gains among lower-achieving students. A Florida state-wide ban in 2023 had the same effect. Two years after pushing phones out of the school day and blocking access to social media, unexcused absences had fallen and test scores had risen in the state. Australia’s ban is already showing encouraging signs. YouGov found that three in five Australian parents had seen at least two positive changes within a month: children more present offline, more time spent with friends face to face, and better relationships with their parents.
We might note that academics are not the only “experts” worried about what technology is doing to children. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Snapchat’s co-founder Evan Spiegel and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan all reportedly take measures to limit their children’s screen time.
All of this points to the wider gains that a ban could bring: not only shielding children from the most extreme harms, but also improving the conditions of ordinary childhood through better sleep, more movement, stronger attention, easier learning and fuller lives lived a little further from the screen. A ban is about the environment children grow up in, and the adults that environment helps to make. It is about the future doctor at your bedside, the teacher in your grandchild’s classroom, the prime ministers we have not yet met. MPs are not only voting on how to prevent harms, but on the conditions that will shape a generation.
[Further reading: Do not celebrate the social media “addiction” ruling]
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