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This year’s groundswell of parent-led campaigning for action on smartphones has lifted the lid on concern to keep kids safe online. With almost every child in the country (91%) owning a smartphone by the time they are 11, it is highly likely to be a hot topic of debate in the upcoming elections.

The list of harms of social media to young people is long and extremely worrying. Increases in self-harm, suicide, anxiety, depression, loneliness, eating disorders, body dysmorphia as well as attentional difficulties, poor sleep, and slower brain development, have all been linked to increased social media use.

In addition, young people find themselves exposed more and more to extreme views (including misogyny, racism, and conspiracy theories), real-life violent content, and dangerous beauty trends such as looksmaxxing and anti-ageing creams that are heavily promoted to children as young as seven.  

The tragic death of Molly Russell in 2017, attributed to the negative effects of online content by the coroner, the murder of Brianna Ghey, whose killers accessed extreme real-life violent content online, and the campaigning of many other bereaved parents, can leave little doubt as to the very real consequences of a toxic online world.  

It has been clear for years that transformative action is needed to protect children and teenagers from these harms, and equally clear that tech platforms are dragging their feet. At Global Action Plan, we’re working to reform the Big Tech business models that harm us and our planet.

Our Safer Socials campaign is channelling public pressure towards regulators to force tech platforms to make their products safe by design. Legislation is emerging in several countries, but many parents and campaigners are rightly frustrated at the slow pace. So how can young people best be protected online without being excluded from the benefits of internet access?  

Educational programmes and guidance for parents on how to support young people to safely navigate the online world are an important tool to protect children, though heavily under-resourced. Many schools are already teaching lessons on media literacy and online safety, and there are fantastic resources (such as these NSPCC online safety toolkits and these helpful youth toolkits from the Centre for Humane Technology) that help parents and teachers have open conversations about social media use, set up safety features and understand the multitude of risks to children.

Such resources are necessary to deal with the consequences of a toxic online environment, but are not sufficient – they do not address the root cause, or hold to account those who are causing the problem. The onus to keep kids safe in a fundamentally harmful online environment should not be put upon parents, teachers, and kids themselves when tech companies could do so much more to make their platforms safer in the first place. 

Furthermore, not all children have parents or adult figures with the time and ability to navigate online risks on top of all the other pressures of working and parenting, and those who are most at risk (for example, children in care) are most likely to miss out on protection.  

Tactic 2: Reduce time on social media 

Restricting the use of mobile phones in particular settings (for example, schools) or times of day (taking phones away at night) can be a helpful strategy to reduce the time children spend online. It removes distractions from school work, encourages time with friends in real life, and helps children get a good night’s sleep. Students in schools that have already implemented bans have reported positive impacts. Restrictions on smartphones in schools therefore seem like a positive step.  

But as we, and other online safety campaigners argue, banning or restricting mobile phones in schools will do nothing to address the harmful online content that children are exposed to before and after school. Until the tech platforms are designed in a way that make it safe for children to be online, then the risk to young people remains.  

Delaying access to smartphones and social media can help protect younger children from a harmful online environment – but they will still be online through other devices, and it will not make the online environment any safer when they do engage with it.  

As awareness of the harms of social media to children grows, a surge of parent groups have come together to agree to delay giving smartphones to their kids until at least age 14. These groups have challenged the social norms of children owning smartphones at young ages and helped parents feel united rather than pressured to buy their kids smartphones at a younger age than they would like. Others are asking for a ban on the sale of smartphones to under 16’s. This is proving to be a popular measure, with a recent poll finding that the majority (57%) of adults are in favour of such a ban. But in reality this would have minimal impact, given the vast majority of under 16s do not purchase their own devices. 

The addictive design of smartphones, and their ubiquitous presence makes them particularly harmful devices and so it is understandable why banning their use for younger children seems like an attractive option.  

But restricting smartphone use at any age will not stop children from accessing the internet. They will still use tablets, laptops, and consoles to do homework, watch TV, play games, listen to music, create art, and other activities that kids enjoy doing. Unless the online platforms themselves are cleaned up, children will still be exposed to harmful online content that puts their mental health at risk.  

Another tactic is to delay access to social media sites by raising the age of access from 13 to 15 or 16, which is overwhelmingly popular and supported by 76% of the British public. In reality, age restrictions are not enforced and over half of UK children under the age of 13 use social media.

Increases in age limits would therefore need to be paired with better enforcement of these restrictions to have any impact. But again, delaying access to social media does nothing to solve any of the problems that will hit young people when they access social media sites at age 15 or 16.

All the addictive design features and powerful algorithms that push extreme content will be there waiting for them. Tech companies have always had the power to make their platforms safer for children, but to date have shown little desire to do so.

1 in 3 internet users worldwide are children, and with platforms proving so unwilling to self-regulate it is down to Governments to compel Big Tech companies to design their platforms in a way that is safe for children. Only this scale of systemic reform would fix the root cause of the toxic online climate that we all experience.  

The rising evidence of harms to young people – and even their deaths – have not been enough to motivate Big Tech companies to voluntarily design their platforms safely for children.  

On the contrary, online platforms are designed to monopolise young people’s attention – everyone’s attention – because that is how these companies increase their profits. Algorithms are optimised to predict what each of us find most engaging and feed us that content, keeping us hooked so they can serve us more adverts. 

Our human brains are wired to pay most attention to negative information, and so what is most engaging is often what is most harmful. Platforms know this, which is why harmful content that is shocking, conspiratorial, or even violent is often promoted most aggressively by their algorithms.  

It is understandable that many proposed solutions to protect children from harm online focus on keeping them away from the internet. But the internet can also be a positive part of children’s lives. It’s where they learn, explore, play, and connect with others. It's where they access the news, and support and advice for their mental and physical health. It’s where they find their community and support networks.  

We shouldn’t just accept that online platforms can’t be made safe and so children shouldn’t be there. They can and they should be – it’s just not in the interests of tech companies to make this happen. As Mo, aged 17 told us:

“Social media is both good and bad. You can see some horrible things on there, but it can be really useful for being creative and keeping up with what’s going on in the news. That shouldn’t be taken away from young people. The tech companies should do more to stop the bad stuff coming through.”  

Child safety groups are warning that the new Online Safety Act – whose regulator, Ofcom, is currently consulting on how the platforms should enact the new child-safety duties – does not go anywhere near far enough to protect children from addictive and risky design. The draft codes and guidance place too high an emphasis on children and parents choosing to turn on protective settings and tools, when in reality it is estimated that 90 per cent of us never change a single setting. 

Also noticeable by its absence is a focus on the core business models of the platforms and how it relates to harm. Global Action Plan’s view is that confronting the twin pillars of ‘surveillance advertising’ and outrage-based recommender systems is fundamental to rewiring the online space towards safety, and legislation will miss the mark without consideration of this. 

When reviewing the serious dangers to children online, the Education Select Committee recently recommended that the next government should consider proposals to ban smartphones for under 16s within its first year. We urge this not to be a distraction from stronger legislation to make online spaces safe for kids and to place accountability where it really lies, with the tech companies.  

In 2023, Labour pledged to toughen the “weakened and gutted online safety bill” and to legislate as one of their first acts of government, if the party wins the next election.  

Whoever forms the next government, Global Action Plan will be watching and holding them to account to go further and faster than what’s currently on the table to keep kids safe online.