The Youth Select Committee has decided not to recommend a social media ban for under 16s in the UK, but has recommended several measures to stop and prevent violent content being exposed to young people online.
This comes after the success of Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s Adolescence, which explores how online radicalisation and “the manosphere” can lead to real-world violence among teens in the UK.
The committee reviewed how violent content is shown to young people in the UK through social media, and reported that they could not find a solid link between young people seeing violent content online, and committing it in real life. So what did they find?
First off, The UK Safer Internet Centre suggested that “misogynist influencers… have leveraged their fame to promote polarised far-right extremism” with a focus on “gendered hate”, and it was further argued that this is influencing how boys are treating girls, especially in schools. This comes after a recent survey showed that a fifth of Gen Z women have avoided or left certain media platforms due to misogyny, 40% of them mentioning X (formerly Twitter). A separate survey showed that 57% of Gen Z men believe that we have gone too far in terms of gender equality.
The committee surveyed 10,000 young people between the ages of 13-17, and found that in England and Wales, 1 in 5 children have been a victim of some form of violence in the past year, 9% were victims of serious violence, and 16% had perpetrated violence themselves.
Of the same group of 10,000 13-17-year-olds surveyed, 70% of them had witnessed some form of real-world violence online, and that jumps to 91% when only young people who had perpetrated violence themselves were surveyed.
The group also found flaws in the Online Safety Bill, which was passed in 2023, and means that social media companies have to put age limits on restricted content, take down violent content, and publish risk assessments about their sites. If they don’t comply, they can get fined up to £18 million, or 10% of their global worth, whatever’s higher.
On recommendations, the Committee found that the bill isn’t robust enough to enforce age limits to protect young viewers from seeing inappropriate content, and that the UK Government needs to report the progress of the bill every year to Parliament.
Furthermore, it found that young people need better media literacy to separate fact from fiction, and this needs to be put into the English and Welsh national curriculums. Additionally, they recommended that the UK Government should provide dedicated funding to local authorities to crack down on youth violence, and work with them to create more opportunities for young people.
The Youth Select Committee also suggested that the UK Government should explore options to create a way to rate social media spaces based on safety, which consumers can see before they join the platform, and given the option to choose safer spaces if they want to. They added that whilst referring violations of the Online Safety Bill to Ofcom can be effective, further publicising a social media company’s poor practices could incentivise them to do better.
So whilst there’s not going to be an under-16s social media ban, the Youth Select Committee says that the UK Government needs to do some serious work to protect young people online.
4th year Politics and Journalism student.
Secretary for Brig
The Herald Student Press Awards Columnist Of The Year 2024 (which sorry i’m still not over)
