Firms make fortunes selling addictive & dangerous product to kids: social media..in other industries it would be illegal
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AS Technology Secretary Peter Kyle announces we will not be following Australia in banning children from social media, there is now extensive evidence that smartphones are changing childhood for the worse. We are facing a mental health crisis among teenagers that correlates directly to the age children first started getting smartphones and using social media.
![[We are facing a mental health crisis among children that correlates directly to the age they first start using social media]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/children-using-smartphones-standing-row-467737314.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Our kids are exposed to the kind of content we would never dream of showing them in real life — accessed via mini super-computers in their pockets 24/7. Extreme content is being pushed on them by algorithms designed to keep them hooked. Sexual imagery, violent scenes and extreme viewpoints have become totally normalised for kids.
![[Technology Secretary Peter Kyle announced we will not be following Australia in banning children from social media]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2024-peter-kyle-secretary-state-917520379.jpg?strip=all&w=641)
And once children see these things, they cannot un-see them. And many kids are spending between five and eight hours a day on smartphones . . . displacing the hobbies, socialising and real-world interactions that are so vital for healthy childhood development.
These stats are shocking but they are not surprising because the business model of social media platforms is all about maximising engagement — getting kids to spend as much time on them as possible. In just a few years, smartphones and social media use have become a major problem for millions of families.
We set up the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign in February after an Instagram post shared by my wife — about not wanting our eight-year- old daughter to get a smartphone — went viral. Within days there were thousands of Smartphone Free Childhood WhatsApp groups all over the country, filled with parents who were struggling with this unwelcome new frontier of parenting.
