A ban on social media for under-16s has been backed by the House of Lords.
An amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, tabled by former Conservative schools minister Lord Nash, would require social‑media platforms to use age‑checking technology so that under-16s are not able to sign up for accounts or continue using them.
In a heavy defeat for the government, peers supported this cross-party move by 261 votes to 150, meaning it will now have to be considered by MPs in the Commons.
Earlier this week the government announced a consultation on restricting children’s use of social media, including the possibility of an under-16s ban, when revealing new non-statutory guidance for schools on mobile phones.
The existing guidance on mobile phone use in schools says phones should be “prohibited” throughout the school day, “including during lessons, the time between lessons, breaktimes and lunchtime”.
Social media ‘damaging children’s health’
Lord Nash said: “The government’s consultation is, in my view, unnecessary, misconceived and clearly a last-minute attempt to kick this can down the road.”
Proposing the amendment, the Conservative peer told the upper chamber: “Many teenagers are spending long hours - five, six, seven or more a day - on social media.”
And he warned there is a “huge volume of evidence in academic studies” that shows social media is “damaging” to children’s health.
Lord Nash said: “We have reached an inflection point. We are facing nothing short of a societal catastrophe caused by the fact that so many of our children are addicted to social media.”
He added that the evidence of the damage caused is “overwhelming”.
“We have long passed the point of correlation or causation. There is now so much evidence from across the world that it is clear that by every measure - health, cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, economic productivity - children are being harmed,” he said.
“This [ban] is going to happen. The only question is when. We have the opportunity to do it now in this bill, and every day which passes, more damage is being done to children. We must act now.”
Lord Nash, who founded the multi-academy trust Future Academies and sits on its board of trustees, also cited the support of the NEU and NASUWT teaching unions and Ofsted chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver as further reasons to support the social media ban.
Yesterday, speaking at the Bett UK edtech conference in London, the Ofsted chief inspector said he would have consulted on a social media ban for under-16s sooner.
Sir Martyn has also said that schools need to carefully consider their phone policies. And the inspectorate has now said that, from April, it will ask about school’s phone policies in every inspection.
MPs to decide
The amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was sponsored by cross-bench, Liberal Democrat and Labour members of the House of Lords.
Yesterday’s vote does not enact a ban in practice, but the amendment will now go to the House of Commons, where MPs would need to remove or vote against it to stop it becoming law, regardless of the government’s consultation, which is slated to last three months.
To prevent students using their phones during the school day, an increasing number of schools are now using lockable phone pouches, with recent Teacher Tapp polling showing that 18 per cent of schools now use them or collect phones from students - double the number that were doing so in February 2024.
Last week Manny Botwe, headteacher of Tytherington School in Macclesfield, told Tes the introduction of phone pouches was “one of the most popular, if not the most popular, thing with parents that we’ve done in my 11 years here”.
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