Call to ban smartphones in school amid warnings over toll of social media on young people's health

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), in a new report, highlights chilling figures to show a near four-fold rise in the number of girls admitted to hospital for self harm in the years to 2022.

Calling for a crackdown on the use of smartphones for under-16s, it argues social media platforms must do more to protect the most vulnerable from the most disturbing content.

The think tank calls for measures from licensing for phones to raising the age of digital consent. Sophia Worringer, deputy policy director, said this is a "national emergency".

“We have a deeply unhappy generation, amplified by the cancer of social media, whose childhood spent online is threatening their adulthood," she warned.

“Unless we act now to increase the age of digital consent to 16 and ban algorithms for users under 16, our forecasts show that a quarter of all children will suffer from a mental disorder by 2030. This is a national emergency and we need to act now.”

The Tories are among those pushing for a ban in schools, tabling an amendment to the Government's education Bill. It would see pupils stopped from using devices during the school day.

Now the CSJ report, Change the Prescription, highlights the challenge amid a dramatic picture over the nation's mental health.

A fifth of adults in England are now taking antidepressants, it claims in the report. Four in five family doctors believe the challenges of life are being overly medicalised, citing the findings of a new Savanta survey.

And people who use social media every day are 1.7 times more likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness, it claims.

The report goes on to warn it is almost too easy to get certain diagnoses, with a danger the "pendulum has swung too far" as boundaries between distress and disorder are "blurred".

Conservative MP Danny Kruger, writing alongside Labour's Simon Opher and former NHS England chief executive Lord Nigel Crisp in the forward, points to self-diagnosis online.

Society must push back at this "costly and ineffective over-medicalisation," he warned, and offer people "compassionate and practical support to feel better."

And when it comes to smartphone use, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said it is launching a new research project.

The Technology Secretary has been clear that "nothing is off the table", but policy decisions must always be based on evidence.

A government spokesperson said: “The safety of children online is paramount. In the next few months, new measures under the Online Safety Act come into force to strengthen these protections through new requirements for age checks and the removal of content judged harmful to children.

"Existing government guidance also helps headteachers decide how best to prohibit pupil phone use in school. We are also commissioning further research on the links between social media and children’s wellbeing to build the evidence base to inform future protective measures.”

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