Social media use ranks with smoking as a threat to the health of young people, according to the UK’s most senior doctors.
In a submission to a government consultation on social media use for under-16s, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges says doctors should routinely ask about screen time and social media use when seeing younger patients.
There is no consensus among the broader scientific community that screen time overall is harmful to children.
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has said new measures on social media for under-16s will be brought in by the end of the year as a consultation on the matter comes to an end.
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Banning social media for children, as has happened in Australia, is one of the options being considered. Kendall said a response to the consultation would come in the summer, with action taken by the end of the year.
Campaigners are split on whether an outright ban on social apps for children is the best approach.
Since March, the government has been asking parents and children if measures including app curfews and stronger age checks would improve online safety, and trialled these in some UK homes.
“The question isn’t whether we’re going to act – we will,” Kendall told the BBC.
She said the government’s scope was looking at a broad range of issues and features, and how these affected children.
This could see the UK look more closely at platforms not covered by Australia’s restrictions, such as Roblox and Discord.
But Kendall said the government wanted to hear “all views” from the consultation, which closes at the end of Tuesday.
“We’ve got to get this right, and we’ve got to make it last,” she added.
The consultation has seen 70,000 submissions from charities, campaign groups and members of the public, giving their views on a ban or other interventions.
In its submission, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges cites as examples the physical and mental health problems caused by watching extreme violence online.
The Academy says there should be guidance for doctors and other health staff on how to spot any inappropriate or unhealthy use of social media and online content.
It recommends recording potential harms, helping fill a gap in data on the scale of the problem.
Possible restrictions include night-time curfews or features such as auto-play and infinite scroll being disabled.
Consultant child psychiatrist Dr Emily Sehmer told BBC Breakfast she considered the dangers of excessive social media usage to be “much, much worse” than smoking as it took just “seconds” for a child to be exposed to damaging harmful content.
“It’s getting younger and younger,” she said, adding that it was “hugely important” for health professionals to ask about social media usage in a non-judgemental way.
“This is a huge proportion of their life that we are missing,” she said. “We don’t know the scale of the problem if we don’t ask.”
People were also asked for opinions on children’s access to AI chatbots, and if enforcement of age checks should be strengthened.
Some groups have backed a ban, including police leaders, who said any platform which did not axe certain features should be banned for under-16s.
Ellen Roome’s son Jools died at the age of 14 in 2022. She is among bereaved families and campaigners who will meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on Tuesday to urge the government to demand he swiftly raises the age of access for social media platforms deemed harmful to 16.
“Later today, I, and other families who have lost children to social media, will tell the prime minister directly: social media is a product, and like any other faulty product causing the deaths of children, it should be restricted until the companies responsible have fixed it and proven it is safe,” Roome said.
Lord Nash, a former Conservative education minister, said his message to the government on its promise to tackle social media harms was simple: “The government gave a commitment to Parliament that they would introduce some form of age or functionality restriction on social media for children under 16.
“Deliver on that commitment fully and in the shortest possible timeframe.”
But other campaigners believe stopping social media access would fail children.
Reports of children in Australia being able to access sites supposedly blocked for under-16s have raised concerns over the law’s effectiveness.
Ian Russell, chair of the online safety charity the Molly Rose Foundation, has previously said the government should enforce existing laws rather than bring in “sledgehammer techniques like bans”.
An open letter signed by child safety charities said the government should make tech firms align with the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), which determines film age ratings, to protect teens “in line with the same high standards applied to film released in UK cinemas”.
“Hundreds of millions of websites are already classified to our standards and filtered by the mobile network operators,” the BBFC’s Chief Executive, David Austen, told the BBC.
“Why can’t social media companies do the same in terms of their content? The answer is they can,” he said.
It is unclear which tech platforms have responded to the government’s consultation or proposals to ban social media for under-16s in the UK.
But Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has said it wants age verification to be handled on a device level, so underage children would be blocked from downloading certain apps.
Kendall told the BBC she would take action even if big tech pushes back.
“No one’s going to stop me from doing what I think is right for this country,” she said.
BBC