Children’s use of social media and the internet is a problem. That doesn’t mean it should be stopped. The internet is at least as interesting and fun for children as it is for adults, and social media is a fact of life. While younger children should not be on platforms where 13 is the minimum age, it is neither practical nor desirable to imagine a world in which teenagers are prevented from accessing the platforms and messaging systems that the adults around them use to organise their lives.
But the pleasure and stimulation that people of all ages find on their screens and smartphones must not blind us to the harm that spending time in this way can cause. The finding that the alarmingly high rate of depression in British teenage girls is closely correlated to time spent on social media is extremely concerning. Research drawn from interviews with almost 11,000 14-year-olds found that two in five girls are on social media for at least three hours a day – with half as many boys engaged to the same extent. More than a third of depressed girls have experienced online harassment. About half of affected girls suffered disrupted sleep, compared with 20% of depressed boys.
Children’s charities and clinicians have long highlighted cyberbullying and issues around self-esteem, often linked to anxieties around attractiveness and sexuality, particularly among girls. While there is nothing new about teenagers being unkind to each other, there is a world of difference between whispered rumours and Photoshopped images. Feeling excluded or unpopular has always been painful, but it didn’t use to be possible for children to torment themselves – or others – with feeds featuring pictures of their peers having a wonderful time.
Although the research does not prove that social media causes depression, the importance of the finding that there is a connection should not be underestimated. This is an area in which, despite a great deal of worrying, evidence remains limited. Schools have done important work in communicating key messages about the risks of online abuse and grooming. But when it comes to broader questions about “screen time” – an unhelpfully broad category conflating television, ebooks, gaming and social media – many professionals as well as parents are confused and uncertain.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, wants official guidelines on time and age limits, and has asked chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies to provide them. This idea has the virtue of simplicity, though some experts question its effects and call for a greater degree of differentiation, arguing that time online per se is not a bad thing and it all depends what you are doing. Also due this year is information commissioner Elizabeth Denham’s Age Appropriate Design Code, covering the use of children’s personal data. Both initiatives are welcome. But the government is playing catch-up. Statutory regulation of the digital media giants is long overdue. The failure to protect children from data harvesting and targeted advertising thus far is as shocking as the lack of concern shown by the companies themselves with regard to children’s psychological health.
Of course, social media companies are not the source of all our ills, and can offer a too-easy target for politicians keen to deflect attention from inadequately resourced schools and health services. There are other reasons for the rising incidence of depression in young people, with increasing pressure to succeed in education and in life more broadly – to be famous, beautiful, rich – often cited as a source of unhappiness or anxiety which can, if aggravated by other factors, and not managed, tip into ill health. But it is shaming that so many inroads into young people’s lives and minds have been made by a handful of Silicon Valley companies whose priority is profit. Safeguarding means more than the avoidance of physical threat.
