Children’s online safety is the issue of our time: David Samuel

For any parent, their child’s safety is the most important thing in the world. We are hard programmed as individuals to protect and shield our kids, at any cost.

So who are we meant to trust with our children’s safety? The social media companies? Big tech? Our Governments? Or actually, are the only people we truly trust to protect them, ourselves?

Working in a world of telecoms for well over two decades, the landscape is unrecognisable from that we faced when starting out in business. The idea of accessibility to the online world, and the access others can gain to our own, is both brilliant and frightening in equal measure.

Add to that the rise in AI, questionable moral decision-making by some tech entrepreneurs and a threat landscape that stretches across borders, it’s no wonder that online safety is such a hot topic. But what will a social media ban in the UK achieve? If you look at the Southern hemisphere you might get the beginnings of an answer.

Australia was one of the first countries to ban social media for under sixteens: the burden being placed on the social media companies themselves.

They were asked to mark their own homework, and if we were to stretch that analogy, they might well get a D grade for effort.

A recent study found that 80 per cent of under 16s were still using social media. The report stated that “Overall, we found insufficient evidence to conclude that exposure to the act [of parliament] had any early substantial effects on social media use among adolescents aged under 16 years,”

So with the UK set to repeat this tactic in 2027, why should we expect different results?

Many parents face the anxiety that their children are more tech savvy than them.

Circumventing these ‘restrictions’ is often too simple, and it just doesn’t make sense to ask social media companies to voluntarily comply.

Should telecoms companies be the solution when some are arguably part of the problem? You might think that businesses in this industry only care about handset sales and data packages. It might sound counterintuitive for a telecoms business to campaign for greater restriction on communications, but some issues are just too important to ignore.

It’s true that there are some child-friendly tech solutions out there. Apps that can turn phones into a ‘brick’ and hardware modes that block usage.

But in our experience, blanket restrictions can have unintended consequences, and what parents actually want, is greater confidence around what their children are doing online, and ultimately, reassurance that they’re safe. What seems to be missing from the debate, is that children are individuals too. They all have different ways of dealing with their emotions and different attitudes to risk. We must better equip parents to deal with these nuances.

They know their children better than anyone else, and they’re the only ones who can and should be trusted know what’s right for them at any given time when it comes to their online safety.

Our role as tech and hardware providers should be to facilitate this. Parents don’t want to be mandated to, or worse, told how to bring up their kids.

But they do need the tools and support to do their jobs as parents and guardians effectively.

We all have a role to play in enhancing online safety for young people. The stakes involved in getting this wrong don’t bear thinking about.

David Samuel is founder of telecoms provider and MVNO 24 Seven