Children as young as three are “being fed content and algorithms designed to hook adults” on social media, a former education minister has warned.
Lord John Nash said analysis by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) suggesting more than 800,000 UK children aged between three and five were already engaging with social media was “deeply alarming”.
The peer, who served as minister for the school system between 2013 and 2017, said that “children who haven’t yet learned to read [are] being fed content and algorithms designed to hook adults”, which, he said, “should concern us all”.
He called for “a major public health campaign so parents better understand the damage being done, and legislation that raises the age limit for social media to 16 whilst holding tech giants to account when they fail to keep children off their platforms”.
The CSJ reached the figure by applying the latest population data to previous research by Ofcom.
The internet and communications watchdog found that almost four in 10 parents of a three to five year-old reported that their child uses at least one social media app or site.
With roughly 2.2 million children in this age group as of 2024, the CSJ said this suggests there could be 814,000 users of social media between three and five years old, a rise of around 220,000 users from the year before.
Lord Nash is among those who have demanded the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill ban under-16s from having access to social media, something that will become law in Australia next month.
From 10 December, social media platforms will have to take reasonable steps to prevent under-16s from having a social media account, in effect blocking them from platforms such as Meta’s Instagram, TikTok and Snap’s Snapchat.
Ministers hope it will protect children from harmful content and online predators.
But one teenager who is against the idea is suing the Australian government as, he says, the measure would make the internet more dangerous for young people, many of whom would ignore the ban.
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Noah Jones, 15, co-plaintiff in a High Court case said a better plan would be “cutting off the bad things about social media”, adding, “I most likely will get around the ban. I know a lot of my mates will”.
UK campaigners have called for stronger policies to stop students using phones in schools, which already have the power to ban phones.
The CSJ wants to see smartphones banned in all schools “to break the 24-hour cycle of phone use”, and said a public health campaign is needed “to highlight the harms of social media”.
Last week Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he worries “about the mind-numbing impact of doomscrolling on social media on young minds and our neurodevelopment”.
