Oral evidence: Impact of social media and screen-use on young people’s health, HC 822

Oral evidence, 22 May 2018.

Witnesses

Matt Blow, Sue Jones, Carolyn Bunting, Dustin Hutchinson and Duncan Stephenson.

Chair

Welcome, all of you. Thank you very much for coming. I will get you to introduce yourselves in a moment. It occurs to me that there are five of you on the panel, which is quite unusual. We will be here forever if you all answer everything. My plea to you is to be really disciplined in giving short, succinct answers. If you take a long time, other people will not have the chance. Please don’t feel obliged to answer every question. If you feel that you have nothing significant to add to what others have said, don’t feel you have to answer. May we start with brief introductions?

Sue Jones

I am Sue Jones, deputy CEO for Ditch the Label, an anti-bullying charity.

Matt Blow

I am Matt Blow, policy and government affairs manager for YoungMinds, a youth mental health charity.

Duncan Stephenson

I am Duncan Stephenson, director of external affairs for the Royal Society for Public Health.

Dustin Hutchinson

I am Dustin Hutchinson, a policy and research analyst at NCB. I am representing Young NCB, which we consulted, and the Anti-Bullying Alliance, which NCB hosts.

Carolyn Bunting

Good morning. My name is Carolyn Bunting. I am the CEO of Internet Matters. We are a not-for-profit organisation that is founded and funded by industry. We want to ensure that children have a safe and age-appropriate experience online. We do that through our work with parents, where we educate and empower parents with the right tools, advice, help and support they need.

Chair

Thank you. I will start with some questions. I would be grateful if I heard from you about the risks and benefits of social media, particularly to children and young people. What is your view on whether and how we can hold social media providers to account for harms that may occur as a result of use of social media?

Carolyn Bunting

We really want to be the voice of parents in this arena. We have done some very recent research—in April—that suggests that over 60% of them are concerned about the impact that social media have on their children’s wellbeing. In fact, as many as 17% say that their children have had a problem with social media and their wellbeing. We think that further research needs to be done to establish a causal link between social media and mental health—it is an area we are very concerned about. We welcome the response to the Green Paper about a statutory code of practice for social media operators. That can only help.

Chair

You talk about a causal link. Are you aware of any evidence, from anywhere, that points to a causal link?

Sue Jones

We know from our research that a lot of young people feel very impacted in their mental health. They feel that a lot of pressure is put on them. That is especially true of young females. A lot of their worth is placed on how they look, how they present and the likes and validation that they get. If they put up a photograph and get negative comments, the impact on them is quite large. Additionally, a lot of young people show their true self online. For example, in an offline environment, they may not be out as a young person, but they may be out online. If that true self is then attacked in some way, the impact on them is quite far-ranging. We need to look at why they are not able to be themselves in an offline environment. There is certainly a lot of impact on young people and how they feel about themselves.

Duncan Stephenson

Last year we published our report “#StatusOfMind,” which looked at the positives and the negatives. There are a lot of positives to support young people’s mental health and wellbeing. We know that it is a place for peer support, particularly if you have a mental health issue, but we also know that there are some challenges. One of the big issues is around sleep. One in five young people are constantly checking their phones and waking up. That is having an effect on their mood and self-esteem. It is a nuanced picture. Social media is not all bad; the issue is how it is used. There is something called active participation versus passive consumption. If you are using social media and are participating, that can be a positive, but smartphones are geared towards consuming information. There is some evidence that, if you are just consuming information, it impacts on levels of anxiety.

Chair

Is there a particular concern about children and young people who may already be vulnerable for various reasons: children in care and children with existing mental health issues?

Duncan Stephenson

The positives of social media are possibly more beneficial to those with low self-esteem, for example. They can be more beneficial to the LGBTQ community, because they provide peer support at a vulnerable age, but the negatives, such as cyber-bullying, might affect those who are more vulnerable—those with low self-esteem.

Dustin Hutchinson

When we consulted young people, they were very clear that there were clear harms in social media that had a negative effect on their self-esteem. They were always seeing other people highlighting a positive experience. There was a tendency for social media to encourage materialism and a culture of comparison. There was addiction and cyber-bullying, and there were negative issues about body image. Young people were also clear about the benefits of social media, which helped them to connect with people, to bond and to feel less lonely. They saw social media as a form of self-expression and creativity, and felt that they could learn from and find inspiration in other people’s struggles. Interestingly, as well as being aware of the harms, they were aware of ways in which they could mitigate those harms. The young people we spoke to were actively putting things in place to mitigate some of the harms of social media.

Chair

Do you think that it is quite important that we have a balanced view in the public discourse of the positives and negatives of the use of social media? Is that a theme you all agree on?

Matt Blow

Yes, completely. When we talk to children and young people, they generally report that social media has a positive impact on their lives. We have just carried out an inquiry with Alex Chalk MP and the Children’s Society. We did a survey of over 1,000 young people on the impact of social media on their mental health and aspects of their lives. Sixty-two per cent. of young people reported that social media had a positive impact on their friendships and family relationships, even though we found that two fifths of young people reported that it had a negative impact on their self-esteem. It is a really nuanced picture. Young people will use social media in different ways. No two individuals will use it exactly the same. Some, particularly those who are experiencing emotional distress or mental health problems, will get benefits from a peer support network. There is access online to health information or information about how to self-manage. There are also lots of benefits around connectivity—but there is that vulnerability. We found that those who are currently experiencing a mental health problem were three times more likely to experience cyber-bullying.

Chair

We have had lots of submissions about the exposure of children, in particular, to pornographic websites, about microblogs having material that is violent in nature, and about the link with eating disorders, the encouragement of behaviours that might be dangerous—self-harm and so forth—and even suicide. What are your concerns about that content?

Dustin Hutchinson

Young people were clear that a lot of the age limits on social media sites and other sites did not necessarily work. They said that there would be age limits of 13 and that, if they wanted to get around those, they could just put in a different date of birth. They were also clear that sometimes explicit content came on to their feed without them actively clicking on it. It was not a choice to engage with this stuff.

Chair

Do you think that finding ways of enforcing age verification is important? The Secretary of State has raised that issue and has presented a challenge to social media companies. Is that important? Should the Government be finding ways of imposing age verification?

Duncan Stephenson

Absolutely. I work for public health. If we have parity of esteem, and if young people’s mental health and wellbeing is being affected by social media, why should that be treated any differently from other risk factors, such as smoking and drinking? Yes, there are positives around social media, but we should look at how we can graduate usage, particularly for those who are vulnerable under the age of 16.

Chair

Do you think that it is achievable to have an effective age verification system in place that works and cannot be circumvented very easily?

Carolyn Bunting

It is a real challenge. Increasingly, parents are left with a very difficult choice between allowing their children on to an environment, because all their peer group is there, and they will be left out if they are not, and trying to enforce age restrictions. It is a very difficult area. The challenge is that children will always want to get on to things before they are allowed to. We also know that children are prepared to try to find ways around things. That is generally what parents tell us. They think that their children know more about it than they do. One of the most critical points is that I do not think that we can use technology and regulation to find our way out of this situation. This is really a cultural and societal issue. It is really all about education of children and parents in this space.

Chair

Do you think that there are no technological solutions, or do you just think that they are not appropriate?

Carolyn Bunting

We would equally welcome technical solutions in this space. It is great to have a backstop so that parents have something to rely on, but ultimately this is about educating our young people to behave online. The environments that we have offline should be the same as those that we have online.

Neil O'Brien

Are any of you aware of any thoughts about how a technical solution might work? If you are trying to have an age limit at 18, you can use credit cards, the national insurance number or something like that. I do not know whether in the community there are any ideas about how you would do this.

Carolyn Bunting

We have just seen Facebook launch its parental consent for Germany, where the GDPR means that consent is going up to 16. When children go on to create their account, they have to find their parent, who has to authorise either via Facebook or by email that they are over 13. It is not 100%. They are working towards a better solution, but that kind of solution is worth exploring much further.

Darren Jones

On this technical solution, I am always amazed that companies are not talking about the national pupil database, because we collect verified dates of birth for all our children who are at school. It seems to me that that could be done pretty simply. We talk about the age of consent. Duncan, I noticed that just now you said 16. Of course, the age of consent under UK law is 12. This Friday, when the GDPR comes in, it will go up to 13. When you talk about young people and consent, do you have a view on where that should be in the span between 13 and 16, which the European Union has set as the age range for defining this issue?

Duncan Stephenson

I guess that it varies. Another public health challenge that we have at the moment is gambling. We know that 70% of young people have seen gambling ads on social media, but the age at which you can gamble is 16 or 18, depending on whether it is a lottery or a betting shop. Young people are being exposed to that risk factor at a younger age. Should it be brought into line with other age restrictions? I do not know.

Chair

Should we think of cyber-bullying differently from other forms of bullying? Is the issue the intensity of it—the sense that you cannot escape from it? How do we respond to it?

Sue Jones

I do not think we should treat it differently. It is another platform for the same bullying. It is further bullying. If a young person is experiencing bullying in what we consider to be the traditional environments, such as school, they go home and there is no escape. Safe places have gone. You can be bullied in front of your friends or family. It can go on at the dinner table or in the family car. It can be from somebody on the other side of the world, whom you have never met before. We need to treat cyber-bullying with the same seriousness and to provide the same proactive and reactive supports. It is just that the impact is further on. If a young person is already feeling really bad, this impacts on them further.

Chair

Is there anything more that we can do? Is there anything that providers should be doing, too?

Sue Jones

I am not sure that it is down to just one person. I know that we have spoken about societal approaches. One of the things that I think is missing is real media information literacy within education, from a very young age. We have talked about phased approaches to technology, but we also need to teach young people how to navigate the internet critically—all of it, whether it is social media platforms or websites. Basically, we have said to young people, “There is the world. There you go—have fun.” There is often a gap in knowledge for adults and parents, and we assume that young people can use that technology. On a practical level, they can, but how are they navigating what that actually means? Are they becoming desensitised to it? Are they shocked by it? What are the long-term impacts? This should be phased in at school. I appreciate that we already give teachers so much work to do, but there is a massive lack of media information literacy.

Matt Blow

I agree with the educative point. In our inquiry, when we heard from young people, they said that the response from social media companies if they reported bullying was very slow and inadequate. They did not know what to expect. Quite often, they also did not know what the rules were around how to behave online or on the platform.

Chair

Is it easy to report to the social media companies?

Matt Blow

Generally, the larger companies tend to have better reporting mechanisms, but one of the things that young people said was that they did not know what the consequence of their report would be. They would make a report, but they would not see that anything had happened. There was no comeback. They never heard back from the social media company.

Chair

You would say that that is a clear area where social media companies need to up their game.

Matt Blow

Yes. They also need to make young people aware of what the rights and responsibilities on the platform are.

Sue Jones

We still get many young people who we assume are digitally savvy asking us to report on the basic social media platforms. We are still having to provide support on that. As an organisation, we are what is known as a trusted flagger. Young people can come to us and say, “There is this post on Instagram that is highly offensive. They are teasing me.” We can get that removed for them, because we have a relationship with those organisations. There needs to be more of that. We currently have it with Google, Facebook and Instagram. There is a way of doing it, but it is for us to do. Young people have to find us first.

Chair

That is an invaluable service, but a child ought to be able to do it directly.

Sue Jones

They have to find us first to do it. There are many organisations that can do it. That really helps the platforms, because they are overwhelmed by reports. It is easier for us to look at something and to make a critical decision about whether there is an issue, but it needs to be taken seriously a lot more. Young people tell us all the time, “I reported, and nothing happened.”

Dustin Hutchinson

We found evidence in the Anti-Bullying Alliance that there is a real relationship between bullying in the real world and cyber-bullying. As Sue said, they are not separate, distinct worlds for young people—each is just as real as the other, and they both have an impact on them. With some elements of cyber-bullying, a slight difference can be the degree of separation. Sometimes, because they cannot see the reactions of the people they are cyber-bullying, there can be a tendency for people to be harsher or to bully in different ways. We have had clear evidence of the impacts of cyber-bullying. There is evidence from the Anti-Bullying Alliance that it affects emotional problems, stress, anxiety and depression. We have also heard that there is a relationship between being cyber-bullied and bullying other people. There is no clear distinction between victims and bullies. People can be in a bully-victim relationship.

Carolyn Bunting

Cyber-bullying is one of the issues parents are most concerned about. One of the key things is transparency. We need to have greater visibility of both the reporting mechanism and of what kind of content is and is not being removed, so that when a situation arises you know what the outcomes are going to be.

Chair

Vicky has a quick question.

Vicky Ford

It is on the issue of reporting and take-down. My impression is that some of the older, more established sites may be easier to report to, but younger people are getting into newer sites all the time. Would it help to have some industry standard, so that people could identify easily how to report?

Matt Blow

Yes. I agree with that. There also needs to be something around communications, so that young people can understand what will happen if they report. That is really important as well.

Vicky Ford

Should anything else be in that standard?

Dustin Hutchinson

I echo the point that was made earlier about feeding back to people. Often young people say that they report something, but they do not know what happens as a result. There should be some feedback mechanism.

Chair

I guess that it can increase the anxiety if they are waiting to hear and do not know what is going to happen.

Sue Jones

Yes. If they then go and check whether the content has been removed and it is still there, they are constantly being triggered, so they are having to see it all the time. As part of that, they have to provide us, even as trusted flaggers, with the content, so that we can check it. Therefore, you still have to access that material.

Carol Monaghan

I am the mother of an 11-year-old daughter who has been badgering me for about six months to get her a social media account. I consider myself to be well informed and educated in this area and think that I probably have more of the facts at my disposal than many people, but I am feeling the pressure of an 11-year-old who is desperate to communicate with her friends, many of whom already have this. We know that 13 is the age restriction for many of the social media sites. I cannot see that in two years’ time I will feel that much happier about it. Is 13 too young? Even assuming that we sort out the technological stuff you have just been talking about, what would prevent me as a parent from overriding that because of the power of my 11-year-old?

Carolyn Bunting

As a parent, it is hugely challenging. We do not want to ban children from the internet. The internet provides a wealth of positive experiences, in education, communication and learning. It is a really difficult challenge to sit here and say, “There is one age when suddenly everyone is capable of being on social media. You are mentally prepared for it and are mature enough to deal with what you are going to see, so off you go.” I think that it will remain a very nuanced debate. Parents are best placed to know when their child is ready to go online. The challenge is that not all parents will care. We have to work hard both to target parents at a broad level and to reach more vulnerable groups. We might need to have a different type of approach for children and parents who are particularly vulnerable.

Carol Monaghan

Perhaps it is not so much that the parents do not care, but that they are busy, have stresses and are living in a difficult environment. All those things can make a difference as well.

Duncan Stephenson

Absolutely. I do not envy parents. It must be a huge struggle, and there must be huge pressures. The onus should not be put just on the parents. That is why education is key. Education should start before children and young people are using social media, so that they are digitally savvy and can be resilient. The pressure should not be placed just on parents, children and young people. Social media platforms need to step up.

Dustin Hutchinson

It is really important that education works not just by scaring young people about the risk, but by engaging with them about the benefits and helping them to understand social media. It is also about educating parents, so that you can get a situation where there is a dialogue between children and parents, and they feel that they can talk about the risks and the challenges of social media together.

Carol Monaghan

The NSPCC has co-authored a report with some fairly shocking statistics in it. It says that 48% of 11 to 16-year-olds have seen online pornography and that 46% have stumbled across it by accident. We know—I think that this was from the girl guides—that 31% of girls aged between 13 and 17 have received unwanted sexual messages. We have talked about the technological challenges of putting in age restrictions. Is that the answer, or is there more to be done?

Sue Jones

We need a phased approach from everybody. I do not think that it is as simple as one person doing something. It is a combination of parents and caregivers doing one thing, education doing another and the networks doing something else. It is not about one person—it is about a multi-stakeholder approach. Personally, I think that it needs to come from all of those. There is not just one answer.

Carol Monaghan

One school got in touch. It talked about the trend for young people to send compromising photos to others. Often, but not always, it involves boys asking girls to send them. Should social media companies be doing more, or should schools be stepping in here as well?

Dustin Hutchinson

This is largely about the topic of body image. Young people talked a lot about the fact that a lot of provocative pictures are posted by models and bloggers, which can put pressure on young people to replicate that behaviour and then to view their own self-worth and popularity in terms of how many likes or followers they get. That seemed to be quite a culture that was happening.

Carol Monaghan

Does it include even compromising pictures?

Dustin Hutchinson

Potentially. The young people also talked about campaigns on social media for positive body image. They thought that those were really helpful and found it reassuring to see some celebrities, campaigns and hashtags talking about positive body image. That was something that they saw on social media.

Matt Blow

As you have said, young people are active generators of online content, which might include compromising images, through instant messaging between peers. It is quite difficult fully to restrict access to content. There really needs to be a focus within digital literacy on helping young people to build digital resilience, so that, when they encounter harm, they know how to respond and are able to mitigate it themselves. That needs to be part of the focus of the education.

Sue Jones

My point follows on from that. Teaching around consent—what you are and are not comfortable sharing—is really important. We do not want young people to be shamed for their bodies, their sexuality and all those things, and we do not want them to feel pressured into doing things before they are ready. We need to have very clear, open conversations about consent and the fact that people have agency over their own bodies.

Carol Monaghan

We also heard that some schools are giving out iPads. If I may consider myself again as the parent, what if a school is giving out an iPad that has no filters on it, because the school’s social media policy lacks consistency or it has not thought it through? Is there enough guidance from the Department for Education on how devices should be used in learning?

Sue Jones

I think that it is a bit hit and miss. Some schools have tried to go paper free—that is how it started for a lot of schools—but it does not encourage some away time, to switch off. There are ways of integrating it well, because some children will learn very well in that way, but I am not sure that it should be the whole approach.

Carolyn Bunting

At least within the school environment schools have to have appropriate filtering in place. When using devices that are connected to the school’s broadband network, appropriate filtering needs to be in place.[1]

Chair

You say that they have to have it. What makes them have to have it? We are told that it is inconsistent.

Carolyn Bunting

Really? Okay.

Chair

Some schools hand out iPads without filters, as Carol has said. Others have clear policies in place. You say that they have to do it. Is there a law that says that? Is there guidance from the DFE?

Carolyn Bunting

I thought that there was. Let me go away to find that guidance and send it to you. I do not know whether anyone else can comment.

Matt Blow

My understanding is that it was e-safety guidance from Ofsted, which specifically mentions the notion of filtering.

Carol Monaghan

Does that affect only iPads that are being used within a school environment? If they are being sent home with children, they could be used without filters.

Carolyn Bunting

Yes.

Carol Monaghan

So some restrictions should be in place on them.

Carolyn Bunting

When it comes to filtering in the home, a raft of tools are available to parents to control access to adult content. They are not taken up broadly. More could be done to educate parents about the fact that they exist and that they could use them. We also welcome the age verification that will come in later in the year, to age-verify when you go on to an adult content website.

Chair

Can’t it be the default position when the equipment is purchased to start with?

Carolyn Bunting

Absolutely. Interestingly, Virgin Media announced just last week that now its filtering will be default on for all new customers. Sky is already in that situation. Others offer a service where you choose—

Chair

Should that be a legal requirement when selling to a child under a specific age?

Carolyn Bunting

I do not know. What we need to do is educate parents about the rafts of tools that are available. You can control and filter the content that comes in through your home wi-fi. It is never going to be 100%.

Chair

Doesn’t that potentially leave the most vulnerable children most at risk?

Carolyn Bunting

Potentially, yes.

Carol Monaghan

Would it better if there was an opt-in to adult content, rather than an opt-out?

Carolyn Bunting

I think that that is how the mobile networks do it. It is an opt-in. Basically, you have to prove that you are over 18 to get access to adult content.

Dustin Hutchinson

The young people we spoke to talked about a range of roles for social media companies and technology companies. They talked about having warnings of the dangers on social media sites and of having simple explanations of protected privacy settings that young people could understand on the sites. They also talked about having simple reporting methods on the apps and were in support of having phones that restricted access to inappropriate content. There were even certain news elements that they did not want. They thought that it would be appropriate to put that on the phones.

Bill Grant

As a Committee, we recently met parents, children, teachers and, indeed, those who manage cadets on a weekly basis. It was clear among those individuals that their greatest concern was cyber-bullying. That has been reflected in some of the comments that you have made this morning. What features and aspects of social media make them the preferred platform for bullying? What is the attraction? What are the elements and aspects of social media that make it so easy to become an online bully?

Sue Jones

Anonymity could be one. You can be whoever you want to be online. That is a huge one. It is very easy to be completely anonymous. It is also very easy to track people down. The search engines are now incredibly powerful. You can find almost anyone, whether they are random people or people you know. Anonymity is a huge challenge.

Duncan Stephenson

With social media, bullying is not limited to the school gates now—it is 24/7. There are rapid vehicles for circulating messages of hate. They are set up in that way. We also live in a very visual age. Understandably, apps such as Instagram are about appearance and photographs. People will be judged on their appearance, hence messages around bullying about appearance.

Bill Grant

You can be judged and mocked.

Duncan Stephenson

Yes—judged on your appearance.

Matt Blow

There are two other small points. One is the lack of adult oversight sometimes. Social media uses mobile phones or tablets to access lots of private spaces where adults do not see what is actually happening, in the way they would in a school. There is also a disinhibition effect in using the internet. One of the things that we picked up quite considerably throughout the inquiry was the notion of bystander behaviour. If bullying was happening in the school playground, quite often the other children would not get involved or would tell the teacher, for example. When it is happening on social media, the fact that other people can see it and are not intervening can have a negative impact. We heard some really shocking stories about “I hate so-and-so” groups being set up on social media accounts that are followed by hundreds or thousands of people. For the young person who is experiencing that bullying, the scale of it is extended considerably, which can be very damaging.

Dustin Hutchinson

In social media, they talk about the social media footprint. The Anti-Bullying Alliance uses the term “social media tattoo,” in the sense that, when something is up there, it can be very hard to remove for the young person. It stays there and is a permanent record of the bullying or humiliation that they have experienced.

Carolyn Bunting

The internet never sleeps. Children face bullying 24/7. It is very easy to do, is totally anonymous at times and can reach vast audiences. As other people on the panel have said, it takes repetition to a different level. Basically, children can revisit the bullying over and over again.

Bill Grant

May I ask a wee supplementary about what you said, Matt? You mentioned what I would describe as traditional bullying, in the playground or the street. Then you have this modern platform. Is there an intertwining of the two types of bullying? What comes first, in general terms? Does the playground migrate to social media, or does social media migrate to the street or the playground? Is it common for them to be intertwined, or do they operate in isolation?

Matt Blow

The evidence shows that the prevalence of offline bullying is still significantly higher than that of online bullying. A big survey last year by The Lancet showed that less than 1% of young people are bullied online and not bullied offline, so it is very connected. Generally, it involves the same people, but it is a slightly different experience and can have slightly different effects.

Sue Jones

It varies quite a lot from platform to platform. For example, if somebody is experiencing abuse on Twitter, often the response is very supportive. Other people will come in as a support. That is less so elsewhere. It can vary widely, but it may not necessarily happen on Instagram or Facebook. On Twitter, we analysed 20 million conversations over a four-year period. Overwhelmingly, if people were being targeted, the supportive response was significant. It does vary.

Bill Grant

Caroline, in your submission, you told us that it can be difficult for parents to spot the signs of cyber-bulling. We are all clear about that. What could or should parents—or, indeed, in cases like me, grandparents—do to reduce the risk or to spot the signs of bullying? If we jump that hurdle and it does happen, how do you advise them to deal with it?

Carolyn Bunting

In the first instance, we really encourage parents to think carefully about letting their children on to social media in the first place. That goes back to the point about whether they are mature enough to deal with what could be an adult environment, essentially, and to understand that people say harmful things. There is a phase of education around setting up and making sure that children understand what they should do in certain circumstances. If they see anything upsetting, they should talk to a trusted adult—to you, their teacher or whoever. There is then a sense that we should help parents to make sure that they are continually checking in with their child, to make sure that they are happy and that everything is going well. Then we need to help them to spot the signs of when things are going wrong. In our research with parents, they say that, intuitively, they are more likely to know that something is going wrong because of a change in the child’s behaviour—for example, if they are withdrawn or they always jump when the phone bleeps. Then we need to put appropriate support in place for parents to get the help that they need and to access professionals, and for schools to step in and support them, in line with their bullying and cyber-bullying policies.

Dustin Hutchinson

Young people talked about the role of health professionals, as well as the role of education. They said that, when they had school counsellors, they would like those counsellors to understand the harms and risks of social media, so that they could have a meaningful dialogue and talk to them about some of the problems they were experiencing. They also suggested that GPs and doctors give health warnings on social media, in the same way as they give health warnings on other issues. It could be seen in that context.

Duncan Stephenson

Youth workers have a role to play as well, and we called for that in our report last year. Youth workers are ideally placed to support young people.

Matt Blow

There is some evidence that those young people who have experienced adversity in their childhood or family life are more likely to have a higher propensity for online risk-taking behaviour. It is important that the professionals who work specifically with those groups—social workers and youth offending teams, for example—have some training around understanding the impact of the online world on mental health.

Bill Grant

Are you pointing to children in foster care and looked-after children? They are quite distinctly higher risk. Is it they or is it those in whose care they are who need to be educated?

Matt Blow

Both, I think. Obviously, most people now have access to the internet, but there are some who have less access. There is also a point around these young people, as people who access the internet at a later age might not develop the skills around knowing about harms and how to respond to them. It is important to identify those people.

Sue Jones

We also need to take into account the fact that intersectionality comes into this a lot. For example, a young person is more likely to be targeted if they are LGBTQ+. They are also more likely to be targeted if they are a person of colour or if they have a disability. If you combine those factors, the rates go up even further, so there are some young people who we know will be more vulnerable. Tone is lost. If you have young people who are on the autism spectrum, they will need additional help to access the internet. There are some wonderful things on there for them, but tone can be lost very easily. They can become vulnerable and not realise that they are experiencing bullying. They may think that it is quite amusing. We need to take all those factors into account.

Bill Grant

I am not pigeonholing people, but you have drifted on to the issue of particular groups. Is there a cultural impact to this? Are certain cultures more vulnerable to it than others? We are a broad church as a nation.

Sue Jones

We find continually that those who are LGBTQ+, people of colour, people of different abilities or those from a low socioeconomic background, and those who combine any of those factors, are always the most targeted groups of young people.

Chair

Those are the things that mark people out as different from their peers.

Sue Jones

Yes—if you are considered to be different. All these factors impact together. For example, a young person who is transgender and is also a person of colour is much more likely to experience bullying. There are groups of people—minority groups—who we know will be more at risk.

Dustin Hutchinson

On that point, the Anti-Bullying Alliance found evidence that disabled children and those with special educational needs were more vulnerable to cyber-bullying.

Darren Jones

We have been talking about the content of social media, but I want to have a conversation about the amount of time spent on social media. I know that all of you have had some involvement in that. What do you think are the risks associated with spending larger amounts of time on social media and on devices?

Duncan Stephenson

There is some evidence that, if young people spend more than three hours a day on social media, they have twice the risk of developing mental health issues and problems. It is very difficult, though—

Chair

Presumably, it is hard to know chicken and egg.

Duncan Stephenson

It is partly that. It is also partly complicated by the fact that it is about not just the amount of time spent on social media, but what you do—the context and the content that you are accessing. If you are spending that time getting peer support, et cetera, it could be a good thing. We just do not necessarily know. We need more research in this area.

Vicky Ford

Really? There has not been enough research into screen time and its impact.

Duncan Stephenson

In terms of what young people are accessing and how they are accessing it.

Chair

Is the issue determining a causal link? I can imagine that someone who is mentally distressed or has mental ill health may well end up using social media more in particular circumstances. Can it be the other way around, in a sense?

Duncan Stephenson

We need to understand the context and the content better.

Darren Jones

My hesitation—and, probably, Vicky’s surprise as well—was for this reason. Are you really saying that there is a lack of evidence on the light from screens or the time on screens, as distinct from the content? A debate has been happening from members of the Government around putting time limits on this. As the Science and Technology Committee, we need to understand what the evidence behind that is and, therefore, what the recommendations should be. Are you saying that there is no evidence on this at all?

Duncan Stephenson

No, I am not saying that. There are lots of studies out there. Large numbers of people may not have been involved in those studies, but we think that people are probably spending too much time on social media. For example, one in three young people use the internet for six hours a day. There is quite a lot of evidence that two to three hours a day on social media platforms may be too much. It may be impacting on people’s mental health and wellbeing. There is research from Public Health England as well. That is one of the reasons why we have advocated online pop-up warnings. The young people whom we surveyed supported that. Seventy per cent of young people support the idea that, if you spend two to three hours a day on social media or on screen time, something could pop up and say, “You are spending a bit too much time here.”

Chair

Do you have any idea whether that would be effective?

Duncan Stephenson

I do not. That is why we need some more research.

Neil O'Brien

I was also surprised by what you said. What is the gold standard research on this? I am very struck by the fact that you have this idea about pop-ups. There is five a day for fruit and veg, but at the moment there is no agreed thing to unite behind on this—or am I wrong about that?

Duncan Stephenson

In September, we are launching scroll-free September, which is a campaign aimed at encouraging kids to scroll less. We want people not to quit social media, but to put it in the context of their everyday lives, so that they can go out and do other things as well. We say, “Social media is a positive, but try not to spend too much time there, because it could impact on your mental health.”

Chair

We are not in a position to get anything, based on evidence, that is clear and simple, like the five a day, to give guidance both to parents and to children.

Duncan Stephenson

In the research that I did, I found that there are studies that say that two to three hours a day may be too much, and others that argue that six hours a day may be too much. I am slightly confused myself, so it would be good to get further clarification.

Matt Blow

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has done a review of screen time literature. Quite clearly, there is a link with sleep deprivation. With regard to mental health problems, the evidence from the young people we spoke to suggests that it can be two-way. Again, it is the chicken-and-egg point. Young people who are experiencing depression or anxiety may use social media in a way that exacerbates that mental health problem. They may be refreshing content continuously and not feel able to move away from that. At the same time, it may be that they have not felt able to speak to anybody in the real world and that they have found an online community that has been really helpful for them. There will be individual differences on the notion of what is the right amount of time, because some people will use social media for different purposes.

Darren Jones

The report you mentioned earlier, which you did with Alex Chalk, made the same three-hour claim. Is that the same evidence Duncan was referring to?

Matt Blow

It is different. An OECD study said that over a third of 15-year-olds in the UK use social media for more than six hours a day on a weekend day. We found in our survey that 29% of respondents said that they used social media for more than four hours a day on an average day, and 44% said that they used it for more than three hours a day on an average day.

Carolyn Bunting

We talk to parents, mostly. Sixty per cent of parents told us that they are concerned that their children do not have interests outside the web. To me, that is an overwhelming statistic. Six out of 10—60%—said that their children do not have interests outside the web. We also asked them about social media. Sixty-three per cent said that they were concerned that their child spent too much time on social media, with 22% very concerned and 43% somewhat concerned. The challenge parents have is, what is the advice? We all know that technology and the internet can be good and bad. I wonder whether the challenge is to turn the debate around and to say, “Instead of trying to define what is right about screen time, try to define what is wrong. Does your child have no other friends or no outside interests? Are they constantly glued to a tablet?” That is the kind of debate that we need to try to give parents, with better advice about this issue.

Darren Jones

Internet Matters talked about addiction features—this is my language—in social media. What did you mean by that?

Carolyn Bunting

The currency of the internet is to keep you on there for as long as possible. That is the commercial model for these very big businesses, whether they be content providers or social media companies. As I am sure everyone else here will agree, you therefore see features such as snapstreaks, where, essentially, you have to keep bouncing back every day, in some sort of communication. It is a signal of the power of your friendship, so children are engaged in that. You have notifications going on all the time that are pinging you, telling you that people have posted and encouraging you to pick up the handset. It does not take long. We all know as adults that we look at our devices between 100 and 150 times a day; I have read various numbers. In our survey, children said that if they were on social media they were posting 26 times a day. You have services that are encouraging you to be online all the time and parents who are saying, “I don’t know what the right answer is. I need some advice. Tell me what the right answer is.”

Chair

So there is a desperate need for guidance.

Carolyn Bunting

Yes.

Dustin Hutchinson

The young people we spoke to said that they definitely thought that they themselves and other young people whom they knew were addicted to social media. They felt that a lack of real life outside social media could be a real problem for them. They described that they knew other children who they felt could not cope without social media. They really thought that there could be a tendency for it to take over from real life.

Darren Jones

Are there any examples of good practice that you have seen? I do not want to brand-endorse, but I am conscious of the fact that on Apple, for example, my light changes now at 7 pm or so. When I was on the tube this morning, it said, “It looks like you are driving, so we have turned off your notifications.” That is actually quite nice, in many ways. Are other companies doing that sort of stuff?

Carolyn Bunting

There are pop-ups on Nintendo that say, “You have been gaming now for two hours. It’s time to take a break.” I am not aware of the research that says whether that works, but we should certainly look into it.

Vicky Ford

I am quite keen to find real, specific recommendations of actions. You have talked about content filters. Should we build into the handset that it automatically has night light—that that is the automatic setting?

Carolyn Bunting

That can help.

Vicky Ford

But you can then override it.

Carolyn Bunting

My preference would be for us to try to educate parents to say, “Don’t have the devices in the bedroom.” We should start from there. If you start young, and they are not in the bedroom, that is not something that we need to do.

Vicky Ford

Understood, but I have a 16-year-old, an 18-year-old and a 20-year-old. Should the devices automatically come with night light that you have to switch off?

Duncan Stephenson

Totally. The default option should be the healthy option.

Vicky Ford

You mentioned pop-ups that state, “You have spent too long here.” Should there also be an automatic pause? Has anybody trialled that?

Duncan Stephenson

We looked into that and sought young people’s views on it. About one third supported automatic lockout, rather than just something that says, “You have been on too long. Self-appraise your use.” That might be slightly more radical. It assumes that people are on the social media platforms for negative reasons or that it is harming—

Chair

Do we know how long Nintendo has had the warning that comes up after two hours? Perhaps we should write to the company to ask what analysis it has done of the impact of that.

Vicky Ford

Duncan, is that an area where you think it would be worth doing some research—not only on the pop-ups, but on timing people out for 10 minutes?

Duncan Stephenson

Absolutely. That is also why we are quite keen to trial the scroll-free September idea, just to see how difficult it is to quit social media.

Vicky Ford

Does everybody agree that that would be a useful area for research?

Carolyn Bunting

Yes.

Vicky Ford

Fantastic. I just want to make sure that we are getting on the record areas where you think we should make a recommendation, not just what the problem is.

Neil O'Brien

Is there any scientific evidence on whether night mode and softer lighting are beneficial, compared with white light? Has anyone seen a study on that? No.

Chair

We should not just make assumptions.

Vicky Ford

I have heard of studies.

Chair

We need to explore that. Thank you for that cautionary note.

Stephen Metcalfe

Before I come to the question that I was going to ask, I want to follow up on Vicky’s point about the lockout option. Duncan, you said that it was potentially too extreme. Is there a pressure on young people to be online all the time and to respond instantly to notifications, likes, requests and so on? Actually, the lockout is a way of breaking that and being able to escape without it being your fault—a bit like saying, “My phone ran out of battery.” Someone can say, “It wasn’t me. I got locked out. I had been doing it for too long.” Is there any merit in exploring that further?

Duncan Stephenson

Yes. The snapchat streaks we talked about earlier are very clearly aimed at getting people hooked and constantly on their phones. The same is true of push notifications; I speak from experience. Anything that we can do to reduce the time has merit. Think of it in terms of body image, for example. If we get our self-esteem from a diverse range of influences and have a balanced attitude and outlook on life, it is better for our overall health and wellbeing. When people get sucked into social media too much, it can have a negative impact.

Dustin Hutchinson

The young people we spoke to talked about engaging with them in their world. They said that you could have engaging videos on social media raising awareness of the risks and problems. Although it sounds counterintuitive, if this was on social media, it could engage them and raise awareness of the risks.

Stephen Metcalfe

Funnily enough, what I wanted to talk about was the ability of social media to present varying, different images. It allows you to create an artificial profile or image of what your life is like, which can make it look far more glamorous and interesting than it might otherwise be. Potentially, that can have a detrimental effect on those who then see it, because they may feel, “Why is my life not as exciting as that?” At the same time, people are able to enhance photos of themselves artificially. Celebrities curate their own profiles, so we create an artificial image of a world out there that does not actually exist. What effect does the idea that I am inadequate, but everyone else is perfect, have both on self-worth, or self-awareness, and on body image?

Duncan Stephenson

It is not just the image manipulation. Another thing we called for in our report was for all images that have been digitally retouched to be flagged. They have done the same in France, where all images that have been digitally manipulated now have to carry a health warning. That may be quite difficult to police, in hindsight; I do not know. But they have introduced it in France, so why not over here? The other issue is the constant pressure to conform to an unrealistic and, often, unattainable body image ideal—one of lean muscularity, for men, and a slender ideal, for women. Apps such as Instagram perpetuate that, because they are very visual.

Matt Blow

I go back to the role of education. It is really important to teach young people that what you see on social media is not necessarily an accurate representation of the real world physically, in terms of body representation. We also think that social media companies can do more to promote positive body confidence and body diversity. YoungMinds is signed up to the Be Real campaign for body confidence. If social media companies were to flag some of that through adverts and so on, it would be really helpful.

Stephen Metcalfe

Duncan, you said that it could be quite difficult to police, because, if you manipulated an image on your own platform and then uploaded it, it would be very difficult for the social media company to know that it had been amended. I get that point, but when you are applying filters that are part of a particular social media company’s offering, surely that can be flagged up.

Duncan Stephenson

Yes. I do not see why not. When we met Facebook, it said, “All images these days are retouched, so the plan wouldn’t work.” We had similar issues when I worked in the body image field. Magazines and fashion editors said, “You can’t show an airbrush-free logo on an image, because it has been digitally retouched. All of them are these days.”

Stephen Metcalfe

Yes. However, having worked in the industry prior to being here, I know that there is a threshold. There is a difference between cleaning something up and digitally enhancing it. I do not know where you would draw the line, but there is a difference. It is a question of finding that. Does anyone else want to make a point on either of those issues?

Dustin Hutchinson

I just want to echo the point that I made earlier about how dangerous it is when children’s and young people’s self-worth and popularity are rooted in followers and likes, and that becomes as important to them as popularity in the non-online world.

Sue Jones

Just under half of young people do not believe that stuff that happens online is real life. That is quite shocking, I think. There is a lot of stress attached to that, because they cannot be away from their phones. They get stressed even if they are away from them for an hour. Those are nuanced mental health effects. We do not know what their long-term impact will be, but it is concerning that young people do not even think that that is real life. There needs to be a lot more education around that.

Stephen Metcalfe

Finally, we heard one case in which a young person had tried unsuccessfully to remove pictures of models from their social media feed, because they felt that they made them feel bad and conveyed the notion of what the perfect body image is. Do you think that more can be done to allow people to do that? Should social media companies take some responsibility for allowing you to filter what is in your feed?

Sue Jones

They brought that in on Instagram, so that you can filter the types of images you see. That has proved very popular with people. There are some people who are really happy to follow people whom they find inspirational. If it gets too much on their feed, they say, “I don’t look like that. That is not my life.” There are some that do this. It is really useful.

Dustin Hutchinson

It is about empowering young people to engage in the online world in a way that maximises the benefits and mitigates the risks, and about techniques that can be put in place to enable them to have a positive experience online.

Vicky Ford

You have talked a bit about the role of schools. I want to try to drill down on what actions we should take. Has there been a strong enough debate about the role of schools? Do schools have clear enough guidance about the role that they should be playing?

Sue Jones

No. We are constantly asked about this by teachers. They need more help.

Vicky Ford

Should that come from the Department for Education? Should there be clearer guidance?

Sue Jones

The time needs to be there, because it is another stress for teachers.

Vicky Ford

Do you believe that social media should be used in the classroom, so that people can have that discussion there, or should children be encouraged to leave their phones at home and not to use them in the classroom? Are those two different questions?

Sue Jones

Overwhelmingly, we are told by teachers that, in the nicest possible way, they have given up trying to fight the use of phones in classrooms. They are now trying to integrate them within the lesson. You have the online polls that are happening in lessons. They are trying to bring in technology in that way, because otherwise they spend half the lesson trying to take phones off people.

Duncan Stephenson

In a separate campaign that we ran on obesity, we found that one in four young people had ordered fast food takeaways to their school from their mobile phones. Phones can be used for good; the issue is trying to graduate what features of a platform should be used by a person. We do not know.

Dustin Hutchinson

We believe that education in social media should be a timetabled part of the curriculum, whether it be in PSHE or in sex and relationships education. It should be a key component, timetabled and delivered by educators specifically trained to educate about the risks and the benefits.

Vicky Ford

Does everybody agree that the PSHE curriculum should include a section on social media?

Duncan Stephenson

Yes.

Vicky Ford

I hear you say that you want specialists—trained people—to deliver that part of the curriculum. However, I have also come across modules that are sponsored by Google or Facebook, so the platforms themselves are taking control of the education. It seems to me that that is a potential conflict of interest. Do you share my concern? Is there more of a role for an organisation such as Internet Matters in providing that part of the curriculum?

Carolyn Bunting

We need to help teachers, who are best placed to deliver this kind of education, but what we hear is that they need more help. It needs to be integrated into their teacher training, and we need to have changes made to the curriculum. I know that we have the consultation on introducing online safety into RE and RSE and on making PSHE mandatory. Those are the steps that we need to take. We should embed it within the curriculum. It is not going away. I do not think that it is necessarily right that we have lots of external organisations that will be difficult to control going into schools and trying to fix this problem. It feels like it is a fundamental piece of the curriculum, in making sure that children are able to deal with the digital world when they leave school.

Vicky Ford

You are saying that the element of PSHE that is digital literacy should be mandatory.

Sue Jones

I think that media and information literacy—digital literacy—should be mandatory in schools. As Carolyn said, it should be embedded, so that it is part of the curriculum, and developed on. You should always be referring back to it. It should be woven into the lessons.

Vicky Ford

That is slightly different from saying that all PSHE should be mandatory. That is possibly more controversial than saying that digital and media literacy should be mandatory. This is my final question. Should that digital and media literacy learning also be delivered to parents? If so, should schools have a mandatory role to deliver it to parents?

Sue Jones

I think that there is a need for parents to be involved in it. Many teachers are already hugely overworked, so I am not sure that that is right for schools or who would be best placed to deliver it. There is definitely a need for it. Parents are terrified of the internet.

Carolyn Bunting

Overwhelmingly, parents are crying out for more help in this area. We need clearer, more succinct guidance and the equivalent of public service broadcasting. I do not know how we make that happen, but we need to motivate parents to get involved and to give them the right advice, so that they can help to support their children.

Dustin Hutchinson

Children said that they wanted their parents to know more about social media, so that they could have a discussion and a dialogue with them.

Vicky Ford

Yes—and not have dinosaurs like me.

Chair

On that note, I will bring in Neil.

Neil O'Brien

Will you give quick answers, if possible? I want to finish Vicky’s thought. If you are a teacher and you want to deliver good lessons on digital literacy, where are the resources to go to? What is the best thing—or is it not clear?

Sue Jones

It is not very clear. There is such a mix. It is everywhere, across the board. There is not one place. As you probably all know, having media and information literacy go into schools came to a staggering halt in about 2014, so teachers are scurrying around everywhere to try to get it from the best possible places.

Neil O'Brien

That is very helpful. We have talked about schools. What responsibility do the social media companies themselves have? Are they doing enough? What are the more positive things that are being done at the moment? Which of the big companies has done anything useful?

Sue Jones

The trusted flagger programme is really good. It should be extended to many more trusted organisations.

Neil O'Brien

What is that?

Sue Jones

If a young person automatically reports content online, it goes into a big pool of reporting that people are struggling to get through on the platforms. Organisations are able to check the content and can then say on a separate channel directly to Facebook, for example, “You need to remove this. We have checked it. We have found that it is offensive or harassing,” or whatever it is. The company removes it, based on that. That is really helpful. There should be more of that for organisations.

Neil O'Brien

Which firms have done that?

Sue Jones

Facebook, Instagram and Google.

Neil O'Brien

Very good. Is there anything else that can usefully be done and that is good?

Matt Blow

A lot of the larger social media platforms will have some initiatives. One big thing is that there does not seem to be very well-published evaluation of them, so it is quite hard to know how effective they have been. That ties into the lack of transparency reporting. They should put things in context and say how many people they have reached. I know that Snapchat and Facebook have worked with the royal taskforce on cyber-bullying to signpost Childline when people report bullying. I know that there has not yet been a published evaluation of that, but we would be interested to see it.

Carolyn Bunting

Default settings for young people should be to private. I know that Facebook has made that move already, but it should happen across all social media. There is no reason why a 13 or 14-year-old needs to have an open public profile on social media.

Dustin Hutchinson

There should be an improvement in reporting mechanisms, so that young people can have confidence in those mechanisms. As we mentioned earlier, there should be feedback to young people about what has happened as a result, so that they can feel secure.

Duncan Stephenson

Engaging with the social media companies is really important. I want to flag that it is also important to engage with the device manufacturers, because there might be some buck-passing. People might say, “Oh, it is not our responsibility.”

Neil O'Brien

Can you give me an example of that?

Duncan Stephenson

When we met a social media platform, it told us that things like the pop-up warning would be not its responsibility but the device manufacturer’s responsibility.

Neil O'Brien

That is a good point. When harmful content is reported, is it removed quickly enough? Can we see public data about how the different companies are performing? Is it going quickly enough, and how can we make it go quicker?

Sue Jones

Young people tell us all the time that it is not removed quickly enough. We have found that from our experience of working with them. Until we have got involved, they have been trying for weeks and months, sometimes, to get content removed. If you are a trusted flagger, you can get it removed within a couple of hours. There is a huge difference. Unless they know about that system and can get to an organisation that can do that, they do not have the access to it.

Neil O'Brien

Can you give us a very quick example? You said that some people have bad things happen and they are not removed quickly enough. What sorts of things do you mean?

Sue Jones

We were working with a young woman who was at university. She was based in the UK. Somebody in Russia, I think, was setting up profiles apparently in her name and attaching really extreme, obscene pornography to her, as if it were her feed. They were doctoring photographs, and other people were finding them and letting her know. She reported them, but they stayed up for months.

Neil O'Brien

Do you mind my asking which company was involved? How long was it between the report and the clean-up?

Sue Jones

It was Facebook. She had been reporting it for four to six months, but they remained up.

Chair

Is that recent?

Sue Jones

It was this year. One or two would come down, but more would go up. They know what the IP addresses are, so they can block them. She reported it to us, we went through the trusted flagger scheme, and every platform was down within an hour.

Neil O'Brien

That is very interesting. Does anyone else want to comment on the speed at which things are sorted out? If not, that is fine. In 2017, Tumblr launched a “safe mode,” which filters out sensitive content from appearing on your dashboard. Is that the answer for other platforms? Should all companies have a “safe mode” feature?

Matt Blow

There is something in that. We support the age-appropriate design code that is in the Data Protection Bill. There is something about recognising that children are not children online and making sure that communication around rights, responsibilities and everything like that is age appropriate. That is quite important.

Neil O'Brien

I have a bigger, more sweeping question. A report by the Children’s Society accused social media companies of “marking their own homework” through self-regulation. Has self-regulation failed? I would be interested to hear your take on that.

Sue Jones

That one is a bit of a mixed bag.

Carolyn Bunting

I think that they need to do more. We welcome the call for transparency reporting. If you do not measure stuff, you cannot possibly manage this. The very first step in this is to get to grips with what is actually going on for UK children on social media. Once we see that, we can take a view on whether self-regulation is or is not working. In the absence of evidence, it is difficult to say whether it is. Anecdotally, one feels that it is not, because there are lots of low experiences.

Neil O'Brien

You mean things like reporting take-down times and average wait times.

Carolyn Bunting

Yes.

Duncan Stephenson

There seems to be a lack of consistency in how different platforms are approaching and embracing this. A standardised national code of practice might be the way to go.

Dustin Hutchinson

The NSPCC has called for a mandatory code of safety, backed up by an independent regulator. We would support that.

Neil O'Brien

That is good. Thank you very much.

Chair

I can see the great value of the trusted flagger scheme. Do Facebook and others like it fund that?

Sue Jones

Yes. It is their own system.

Chair

So they provide funding to charities in order to—

Sue Jones

No. They provide the service. It is on their platform. It is just that they give you access to quicker reporting mechanisms.

Chair

But you and other charities—

Sue Jones

We do not pay for it.

Chair

But you are doing it. You are contributing to their maintaining safety.

Sue Jones

Yes.

Chair

They do not provide you with any funding to support that work.

Sue Jones

No.

Chair

Should they?

Sue Jones

There is an element of that to it.

Chair

Given that direct complaints do not appear to get any response, it is quite valuable to them to have you and others—

Vicky Ford

Some do.

Chair

Okay, but we heard the evidence of one girl waiting months for any response. Should there be funding from the industry to organisations?

Sue Jones

I think so. That is reasonable, if you are a trusted flagger and, to a degree, you are doing some of their work for them. As a charity, we support over a million young people every year. For us, it is a valuable service, because we can reduce their stress and anxiety. If funding was involved in that, it would be hugely helpful.

Neil O'Brien

Are there any restrictions on who can become a trusted flagger?

Sue Jones

Yes.

Neil O'Brien

Can a local authority or a school become a trusted flagger?

Sue Jones

You have to make an application. You have to be working with young people directly. There are rules around who can be a trusted flagger. They very much decide that.

Chair

They are rules set by Facebook.

Sue Jones

Yes—their own rules. If you say, “Can we become a trusted flagger?” they will look at what you do and what services you provide.

Neil O'Brien

Should we be expanding the number of people? Should schools have that ability?

Sue Jones

That is interesting. Initially, it was used widely by the revenge porn helpline, which was getting content removed very quickly. It was then expanded. YouTube also does it. Ultimately, there could be more. Whether it came through to—

Chair

It seems like a good system, but it is getting to only part of the problem at the moment.

Sue Jones

Yes.

Chair

It seems that, overall, there has been a revolution in the last 10 years in what confronts children as they grow up. We are now grappling to catch up by getting the evidence and getting the guidance out there. Is that a fair characterisation of what is happening out there?

Carolyn Bunting

The pace of change of technology is so great that it is hard for all of us to keep up and to have a really robust evidence base, because the technology moves on once again.

Chair

Thank you very much. We appreciate your time. Examination of witnesses

Witnesses

Amy Orben, Dr Lucy Betts, Dr Mark Griffiths and Dr Andrew Przybylski.

Chair

Welcome. Good morning, all of you. First, may I apologise for the late start? We overran with the first panel. May I also say that at 11.30 there will be a one minute’s silence? A bell will ring.

Dr Griffiths

That has just been postponed to 2.30 pm.

Chair

Thank you for that update. There will not be a one minute’s silence at 11.30. We have a panel of four. Will you make sure that your answers are succinct? Don’t feel obliged to answer every question, if you do not feel you have anything to add to what others have already said. May we start with brief introductions?

Dr Przybylski

Hi. I am Professor Andy Przybylski. I am a psychologist and senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. I am trained as an experimental psychologist.

Amy Orben

I am Amy Orben. I am representing the British Psychological Society, but I am also at Oxford. I am a college lecturer at Queen’s College, and I am finishing off my PhD. I sit in experimental psychology.

Dr Betts

Hello. I am Dr Lucy Betts. I am an associate professor at Nottingham Trent University. I am also a member of the Nottingham Centre for Children, Young People and Families.

Dr Griffiths

I am Dr Mark Griffiths. I am distinguished professor of behavioural addiction at Nottingham Trent University. I am the director of the international gaming research unit. I have been researching the area of behavioural addictions for 31 years.

Chair

Thank you very much. We began our first panel discussion by asking whether social media can be held responsible for causing or exacerbating mental health problems and so on. May I start by asking each of you to give your brief view on that?

Dr Przybylski

In short, no. At present, there is a pretty spotty evidence base. It is based largely on correlational data. There are a lot of opportunities to read our own biases into the data. There has not yet been a standard evidence map that could allow us to say for sure, or even tentatively, that there is a positive causal relationship between social media use among young people and their mental wellbeing.

Amy Orben

I am coming from pretty much the same perspective. I work mainly with the data, so I see it every day. Oftentimes, we do not find any effects. When we do find effects, they are extremely small. When we take the whole picture into account, they become vanishingly small. From the perspective that there has not been any really good-quality evidence, I do not see that that link can be said to be present.

Chair

We are saying that the considerable anxieties out there about social media use and so forth are unfounded in terms of evidence. Is that what you are telling us?

Amy Orben

When the brief came out from the Committee, you said that you wanted to separate understandable concerns from the hard evidence. That is key. There are understandable concerns. We know that they are understandable, in that this has been a massive change in society. If I were a parent, I would probably be concerned myself, but, as the people who work with the numbers every day, we do not see that transposed into the hard evidence the Committee is looking for.

Dr Betts

Although I agree and acknowledge that there may be a lack of strong causal relationships in this area, I think that it is important to recognise that there is some evidence to suggest an impact on young people’s wellbeing.

Chair

Do you want to expand on that?

Dr Betts

We need to acknowledge and be mindful of how social media can shape and impact, not just in terms of benefits, but through some of the more negative aspects.

Chair

Thank you. Mark?

Dr Griffiths

I broadly agree with what has been said. What we have is a lot of what we call cross-sectional snapshot research, which is not longitudinal. I totally agree with Andrew that we cannot give causation. Having said that, in my area of social media addiction or problematic social media use, there is a lot of correlation between lots of different things, such as depression and anxiety—what you would consider to be mental health issues—and overuse of social media.

Chair

But we do not know which leads to the other.

Dr Griffiths

No. That is where we have to be clear. There is no good causal evidence. We have lots of correlational evidence. I would add that there have now been over 100 studies of Facebook addiction. Most of them have very poor-quality data. There are very few nationally representative samples. There is almost nothing in terms of longitudinal research. However, I echo Lucy, in the sense that I am a parent myself. I have three “screenagers.” [Laughter.] I am being serious. We have to separate out parents’ legitimate concerns. I would say that all my children overuse screen media, but none of them—

Chair

Would you do anything about it?

Dr Griffiths

Oh, yes. I do not limit screen time. My balance is that, as long as my kids are doing their educational stuff, their physical education, their peer development and the chores that they need to do around the house, I have no concerns about what they do with their disposable leisure time after that. I look at what I did when I was their age. I used to watch three or four hours of black-and-white TV, on three channels, every day. My kids do not watch TV. They will watch the odd YouTube video when they are sitting there doing their social media, gaming or what have you. Every week I get emails from parents saying, “My kids are addicted to social media.” When you dive into that, you realise that what they are actually saying is that they think that their kids are using social media too much, which is a completely different thing.

Neil O'Brien

I have a very quick question, which is really aimed at Mark. You said that there is a lot of poor evidence, which is all about correlation. Is there any longitudinal evidence that could give you causation? Is there a plan to get any longitudinal evidence? Within the correlational stuff, what is the gold standard that has a decent N and a decent sample?

Dr Griffiths

There are a number of questions there. For a start, in my specialist area, which is problematic social media use, I know of no longitudinal studies whatsoever.

Amy Orben

There are some in our area.

Dr Griffiths

Looking at which issues?

Amy Orben

There are three that I believe link social media use to wellbeing. They are probably nearing the gold standard, but they are good. There was one that looked at 11,000 UK children at five years old. It looked at how much TV they watched and how much they used touchscreens. It then looked again at seven years old. It looked at five different outcomes, including whether the children had conduct problems, whether they were hyperactive and whether they had emotional problems, after those two years. You can link both TV use and electronic games with the five outcomes. I calculated that there were 30 possible statistical tests that you could do linking one of those with each of the five outcomes. The study found one significant link—watching TV a lot did increase conduct problems. It did not find that electronic games made any difference or that television use made any difference to outcomes other than conduct problems.

Dr Przybylski

Let me build critically on this. When we talk about a correlation between social media use and something like wellbeing, it does not necessarily mean that A causes B or B causes A. In many cases, such as the paper Amy is talking about, A and B are actually both caused by X. We have factors such as being male or female, socioeconomic status, education of parents and geography—whether or not kids can get out to play. When those factors systematically vary or are fixed over time, we see that as predictive of both lots of screen time and, maybe, more mental health deficits.

Amy Orben

Often you can think about it in this way. If a child uses technology a lot, they may feel worse. That link may be there, but it could be caused by a factor way beyond those two factors. If you are from a disadvantaged background, you are probably going to use technology more. You are probably also going to feel worse. In our research, and in research that has properly controlled for these effects, the effects of technology use alone on wellbeing become vanishingly small. This is really difficult to do, and we are not yet ready to say that there are causal links. If you try to look at the bigger picture, the effects become smaller.

Dr Griffiths

Can I butt in? When Amy came in there, I was talking about social media addiction/problematic social media use, which you would never do in a five to seven-year-old population. I go back to my earlier answer. I know of no longitudinal studies that have looked at social media addiction and problematic social media use, particularly among teenagers and emerging adults. I do not disagree with anything that Amy has just said, but those studies are not looking specifically—

Chair

Is there a case for more longitudinal work on this, given the revolution that is happening before our eyes?

Dr Griffiths

Absolutely.

Amy Orben

Yes. We are currently doing some work there. Our hands are tied at the moment, because we do not have the evidence that is necessary to inform both the public and policy makers. What we need is for both funding bodies to look at this a bit more in the future, so that we can put in these important questions, as we know that a panic may arise in about five years’ time. We should now be thinking, “What can we learn from this moment here, where we can’t provide the evidence?” We should be putting in questions about virtual reality use now and funding that research, so that we are not always behind. We are always behind at the moment.

Chair

Is your conclusion from the lack of evidence of causation that we should relax more about this, or is it that, until we get the evidence, we should adopt a precautionary principle and apply clear guidance, as best we can, to limit potential extreme use, for example, and content?

Dr Przybylski

Operating by the precautionary principle is generally a good idea, with some caveats. The first is that we should learn by example. There are parts of the world, such as China and South Korea, where they have taken statutory action to enact things like the shutdown law. In South Korea, under-16s cannot use the internet or play online games between midnight and 6 am. They ran their programme for six years before anyone bothered to check whether it worked. When they checked, they found no decrease in technology addiction, and the average South Korean slept for an average of two more minutes a night. This was a massive step, which had a regulatory burden associated with it, and nobody bothered to check whether it worked. Taking steps based on a precautionary principle makes sense, but we need, first, to learn from other people’s failures, and, secondly, to build in some form of sunset clause or evaluation so that, while we are playing catch-up, we know when a technology or intervention is and is not working. If it is not smart, it can have many unintended consequences.

Chair

And we should evaluate everything that we do as we go forward.

Dr Przybylski

Absolutely.

Chair

Lucy, your survey of mobile phone alerts found that 32% of them triggered users to feel ““upset, nervous, afraid or ashamed.” What can be done to prevent social media from being used in this way?

Dr Betts

Yes, that study, which was part of the submission, was done by one of my colleagues. By using a tracker on participants’ mobile phones, it looked to see how they felt in response to message notifications. The research showed, as you said, that 32% reported negative emotions—feeling “upset, nervous, afraid or ashamed”—when they got notifications that, typically, involved them not interacting with them. This was an example of just receiving or removing the message without engaging with them. It is important to acknowledge that 68% of the states in that piece of work were also positive; that tended to be when participants were interacting with others—typing a message in response to that notification.

Chair

Are there any other comments, very briefly?

Amy Orben

A similar study, not a longitudinal study but one done in the States where they used experience sampling such as Lucy’s, looked at what people were doing on social media. They found that, overall, there was not a lot of an effect but, if you partialled out passive use—if you are scrolling and not interacting at all—there was a small negative effect overall. So that seems to back that up, and it was published in quite a high-profile journal a couple of years ago.

Chair

Thank you. Parents of children have reported not being able to turn off social media for fear of missing out, as it is known, or not keeping contact up to date as a result of being left out of friendship groups, and so on. Should we be concerned about that as a society, or is it overstating a concern?

Dr Griffiths

Andrew will tell you he has written papers on fear of missing out. I have talked about fear of missing out, although I did not call it that, going right back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I was doing research on online addiction more generally. The thing is that, when something becomes 24/7 and people are always online, you will get some people who feel that, when they are not online, they are missing out on something. For most people, that is not going to be a problem at all. From the research that we and others have done, fear of missing out seems to be linked to problematic social media use. Those people who are having negative effects on their lives as a result of that over-use of social media report fear of missing out and what is called nomophobia—no mobile phobia. Those two things are intricately associated with problematic social media use. Obviously, it is also associated with the use of smartphones, because that is where most people are accessing social media. For the record, I do not believe that people are any more addicted to smartphones and the internet than alcoholics are addicted to a bottle. What we are really talking about is the applications that you can do within these media. But Andrew is the expert on fear of missing out. It is an issue, but for some people it is not an issue in terms of problematic use—but we know from the very small minority that have problematic social media use that FOMO is a big issue for them.

Chair

Andrew, I think this is your moment.

Professor Przybylski

It is definitely a subjective state that people have, and it looks like people say that they feel this more than before different types of social media existed. From my perspective, as a psychologist and someone who is interested in health and wellbeing more broadly, the question is whether this is more than just a label. Does it really account for anything in terms of extra-variance in predicting negative outcomes? We just have not seen that yet.

Chair

There is no evidence yet.

Professor Przybylski

No. It may be a new kind of phenomenological sticker that we have put on our states, but, with respect to whether it has added to human suffering, we have not seen that.

Chair

Thank you. Quite a lot of evidence has been given to us about impacts on vulnerable groups—on people in care, perhaps, looked-after children and people with existing mental health problems. Is there any evidence of a particular impact on such groups of social media use?

Amy Orben

I refer to a colleague of mine up in Edinburgh, Sue Fletcher-Watson, who does a lot of work looking at disadvantaged groups, not just the negative but the positive effects. She feels that is really under-represented—the amount of benefit that has been derived for people with disabilities and autism, and in getting children involved. Often, we focus on the negatives, but we also need to focus on the positives. That just came to my mind, and I thought that we should let her voice be heard as well. She would be very passionate about that.

Professor Przybylski

To echo and extend that, there is definitely, especially with online games, a destigmatising effect, especially for people with different forms of disability who might be left out. A number of charities are operating that help people with disabilities to access games, when they cannot necessarily hold and use a controller. That has been quite positive. On the darker part of your question, we do not really know. There has been a good amount of work done on digital exclusion, on people who do not have access to a computer and the internet outside of school. But it is very difficult to do good research with those populations, so it is a very expensive question to answer.

Dr Griffiths

There are vulnerable groups, and the younger you are the more vulnerable. Those who have mental health issues, as Andrew says, are using things like gaming and social media. I have written three reviews on the positive effects of video games, for instance. For someone who is autistic or has bipolar disorder, various studies show that gaming and using social media can have a really positive effect. What I am always talking about is the very small minority where over-use seems to have these associations with particular vulnerable groups, such as those with high anxiety or depression. They are more likely to seek out these things, because it makes them feel psychologically stable. For most people, that is going to be life enhancing and life affirming, but there will be a small minority where it actually just keeps people in that cycle.