Medical leaders have warned that social media and smartphone use is as harmful to children as smoking, in a report submitted to a government consultation on potential restrictions for under-16s. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AOMRC), representing 23 royal medical colleges and faculties across the UK and Ireland, said social media 'ranks alongside smoking and wearing seatbelts in cars as a unifying force for the medical profession'.
The report, submitted ahead of the consultation's closure on Tuesday, said doctors are seeing a 'wave of radicalised children' due to exposure to 'hateful, addictive and grossly distressing content'. It added: 'There can be few issues which have united clinicians so resoundingly in recent years as the impact that unfettered exposure to tech and devices is currently having on children and young people's health.'
Former Health Secretary Wes Streeting backed the call for action, comparing social media to tobacco. 'Social media should be treated like tobacco – it's extremely addictive, bad for our health, and big tech is borrowing the big tobacco playbook to avoid regulation,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He added that lawmakers have been 'asleep at the wheel' on regulation.
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said she would be 'unstoppable' in cracking down on online harms affecting children. In a BBC Breakfast interview, she said: 'No-one's going to stop me from doing what I think is right for this country.' She noted that some parents whose children had died 'want immediate action because they do not want to see any more children coming to harm'.
However, the Children's Coalition for Online Safety, led by 5Rights Foundation and including the NSPCC and Girlguiding, warned that focusing solely on age limits risked failing to address structural drivers of online harms. In a joint statement, 25 organisations called for a ban on targeted advertising and manipulative design features, default safety protections for under-16s, and the creation of an independent online safety commissioner.
