Senior UK police officers have called for the government to ban children under 16 from social media, amid claims the platforms are “fuelling and enabling” crime.
In the most recent development in the moral panic that has gripped the media since Netflix’s Adolescence was released, four of the most senior policing figures in the country told the Times that further controls on social media platforms were necessary for public safety, national security and young people’s mental health.
Sarah Crew, chief constable of Avon and Somerset and the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on rape and serious sexual offences, told the Times that social media platforms were putting children at risk of exploitation and abuse. “Young people are by their nature vulnerable, and this gives those perpetrators who would want to do harm a really direct channel,” she said.
“It’s like the American west in the 1850s – there was a lot happening, and it was expanding quickly, but there was little regulation and law enforcement and codification … It sets norms in people’s minds about what’s acceptable and what’s not.”
Crew went on to liken the situation to a crisis such as the Covid pandemic “where all parts of the state and society and the voluntary sector came together and said: ‘Right this is a real problem.’”
Maggie Blyth, acting chief constable of Gloucestershire and the national police lead for violence against women and girls, claimed that social media was “a significant threat not just to our children and young people but also to our society”. Blyth added: “We are seeing young people acting out violence and behaviour like strangulation because they see it online. There are horrific things that are being normalised.”
Blyth supported a ban alongside other measures such as improved education for children about the dangers of social media, noting that Australia “are ahead of the game”, referring to its decision to ban social media for under-16s last year.
Another chief constable, Tim De Meyer of Surrey police, said he was positive that social media is “fuelling and enabling crime”, arguing a ban for under-16s was crucial. “It just seems to me to be an absolute no-brainer that there should be much greater restrictions.”
Matt Jukes, the police head of counter-terrorism, pointed out that 20% of those arrested for terrorist offences last year were children. “Terrorist groups are now able to radicalise, to share instructions, to share their ideologies,” he told the commission. “The feature which has been driven most by the internet and by online radicalisation has been the emergence of young people in all of that casework.” Jukes added that the Online Safety Act, which has introduced additional safeguards for children and created new requirements for social media companies to actively remove illegal content from their platforms, does not provide adequate protection, saying it was necessary but “not sufficient”.
Neil Basu, a former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, was also keen on banning social media for children. “I hear a lot of arguments that there is no connection between violent imagery and people committing violence. I don’t believe that for a moment after 30 years of policing … The idea that that has no effect seems utterly facile to me. So ban it, yes, and 16 seems reasonable to me.”
According to a United Nations study, the idea is not so facile. The UN found that there is “no clear evidence” that social media leads to more violent behaviour. “Violent radicalisation generally entails a number of tools and should be seen in the context of other communication platforms and significant social factors, such as the political, social, cultural, economic and psychological causes.”
When asked whether the government would consider a ban on under-16s using social media platforms, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, told the Times’ earlier this year that “nothing can be off the table”.
