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Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I support many of the amendments in this group, but I also want to express my concerns about Amendment 94A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I have listened carefully to his arguments and those of other noble Lords who support the amendment. I too am appalled by the many stories that we have heard. I too want to stop children being exposed to harms online. I hope my record in the debates on the Online Safety Act and other digital legislation show my support for measures to increase safety for children in the digital space. I, like all noble Lords, recognise that there are many harms online.

However, I do not think that an outright ban on social media for the under-16s will be effective in protecting children. I hesitate to disagree with my noble friend Lady Kidron, who I normally always agree with, but we should put all the pressure we possibly can directly on Ofcom to make sure we realise the hopes and dreams of the Online Safety Act.

Early this morning, I had an interesting conversation with Jason Trethowan, who runs headspace, Australia’s national youth mental health charity, which last year was accessed by 170,000 young people aged between 12 and 25 in 170 locations across the country. His organisation is at the sharp end of the social media ban in Australia. His main message was that we all want to stop online harms to children, but he called on the Government and legislators to listen to children as well as parents.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, has quite rightly highlighted the harms that exist for young people on social media. However, noble Lords also need to be aware of the crucial role that social media plays for young people in communicating with each other, getting information about the world and, very importantly, getting help and advice from like-minded people.

Jason said that we all need to understand that young people see the online world as their world. It is a central part of their existence, and no amount of bans will remove them from online space. headspace told me that the ban in Australia, which started on 10 December 2025, was a massive shock for many young people. They had been warned of its arrival for months but still were not prepared for the severing of their contacts on social media. Most did not have the phone numbers to continue communicating with their contacts and suddenly found themselves isolated from their peer groups. Many noble Lords will dismiss these severances as youthful folly, but the charity told me that of 3,000 young people who have been seen since the ban was introduced, 10% included social media bans among the reasons for their mental health deteriorating.

One young person on an isolated farm in rural Australia had used an LGBT group on social media to find like-minded young people. He lived in a household he regarded as homophobic, and was geographically far away from many of his online contacts. Suddenly, he found his support network taken away from him.

The schools in Australia are on their summer break until the end of this month, so the full extent of the disruption to the lives of young people is not known.

The young LGBT person will not be able to renew his social media contacts, but rest assured he will find advice somewhere else on the internet. Young people who are banned from social media will find other ways online to assuage their appetites for communication, information and problem-solving.

In Australia, Headspace is already seeing this happening. Young people who can no longer use the 10 major sites, which include Snapchat, X, YouTube, Instagram and Kik, are now migrating to AI sites. Noble Lords have already had debates over concerns about AI as a form of gathering information. Many will be aware of what the West Coast techies call “hallucinations” —the rest of us call them “lies”—appearing in AI research.

Young people are using AI to resolve their problems. On 27 November last year, this House had a debate about banning AI companions, which many young people use for advice. They can be dangerous—my noble friend Lady Kidron told how this led to one young man committing suicide on the advice of an AI companion. Surely, noble Lords do not want to encourage young people to use these AI replacements for social media.

The tech companies will feed that appetite. I know that built into Amendment 94A there is a flexibility for which apps will be used. However, they found in Australia that new platforms are opening all the time. The Australian Government’s original Act banned 10 social media platforms, but already they have had to come up with another list of platforms to ban. This is a game of whack-a-mole, just as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said. It will not be solved by ban on social media platforms. The media will always outpace the legislation.

There are so many harms online, on social media and other platforms. We all agree on that. I have spoken to the charities that have been mentioned many times by noble Lords—the Molly Rose Foundation, Internet Matters, NSPCC and the Online Safety Act Network. They have all championed the development of online safety for children, as noble Lords have already mentioned, and all are against a blanket ban on social media for under-16s in this country. They suggest that instead of banning social media, the Online Safety Act should be amended. I know that my noble friend Lady Kidron has said that that is not possible to do.