Latest / Teachers Talk Radio / Ban or Protect? Teachers Debate Social Media for Under-16s: Points of View

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Ban or Protect? Teachers Debate Social Media for Under-16s: Points of View · Teachers Talk Radio

0:00
Welcome to TKO Talk Radio! Thank you for listening!
0:21
Good morning and welcome to Points
0:24
of View on Teachers Talk Radio with myself, Liz, Carl, Ray and Lucy.
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This morning we are talking about quite a hot topic in education generally,
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in the country generally, which affects young people and it will naturally feed
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into schools so we thought we'd talk about it this morning.
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So the House of Lords is back to move to ban under 16s in the UK from social media platforms.
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By 261 votes to 150, opposition peers voted to support a ban through an amendment
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to the government's schools bill.
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The government, however, has indicated it will try to overturn the amendment
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in the Commons whilst it holds its own consultation on a potential ban.
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What are everyone's thoughts on this move? It's really gained momentum this week.
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We feel like we've been talking about something similar for a while,
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But all of a sudden it feels quite serious and impending and quick.
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Well, I mean, I'm always happy to start. So I support this wholeheartedly.
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My children are all adults now. I've said before on this show,
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I've got two sons, 27 and 24 and a 19-year-old daughter, and they refer to her as the iPad generation.
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And she's not even, she wasn't even in the thick of it, if you see what I mean,
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because it's the kids now that are the real iPad generation.
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You know, from the time they're in their push chairs and prams,
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they've got a screen in front of them.
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And I do understand it when you're out and about and you need to get on with things.
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I do understand that temptation, but we know that children are picking up books
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in classrooms at school and trying to swipe them and things because they don't know what books are.
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And this of course leads on to the next thing and the next thing.
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And so children are getting social media younger and younger.
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They're getting around all the controls in terms of you have to be 13.
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I think one of my sons might be celebrating something like his 30th birthday
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now because he signed up before he was at the right age.
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And so he's now about 30 when he's actually not because all you had to do is type in your name.
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The difference is back then when they were looking into it, there was no algorithm.
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There were no, it was just what.
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Somebody else posted that you read and
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we know now that it's completely different and and
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it's the algorithm rhythms have been deliberately designed
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to make this addictive and what they do
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is they start off with something so say if you look at i'm trying to pick a
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topic that's not that's not within children but say if it's looking at celebrities
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and and how they look and and it transgresses to how they become sithin what
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treatments are they getting what what diet are they eating?
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How did they lose so much weight for it? And before you know it,
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those kids have been shown and introduced to concepts of weight,
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of vanity, of appearance, and given a false impression of how they should look.
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And you can see it in classrooms. You can see it amongst young girls in particular, but even young boys.
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You know, girls who are getting, I remember a student of mine used to get up
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at five in the morning and she was so tired because she had to put her makeup
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on and she had the kind of stuff that you would put on for a once-in-a-year party.
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You know, this was your regular daily look in case someone took a photo.
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And it's damaging children. It's causing them harm because at the other end
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of the day, she would have been sat there the night before scrolling and scrolling
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and scrolling because there's another video or there's another article or there's
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something else and it's quick and it comes up.
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And it's taking young people's opportunity to...
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To get lost in their own world because
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they're being shown into other worlds and so for that
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reason I entirely support this ban it's
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no good for young people's mental health if I had my
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own way I'm an avid user of Twitter I'm on there typing stuff
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in and you know posting stuff all the time I I
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couldn't give it up but I wish it never started I wish I'd never joined and
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I don't I haven't joined other than Facebook I've got Instagram but I won't
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use it and I won't use any other I won't go on to TikTok or any of it now because
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I just feel it's like a Pandora's box and once you've opened it it's just so
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hard to get out and I'm an adult.
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I mean I love that you said that
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it's taking their opportunity to get lost in their own world way because I think
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there are two main issues there's the content of social media which is damaging
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and then that splits off there's the actual damaging content that they're being
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exposed to that they shouldn't it's the way that it influences their views of
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themselves and the world around them.
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There's the addiction element of it and the dopamine kicks and the fact that
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these apps are engineered to...
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Manipulate that and take advantage of it. But then there's the opportunity cost of social media.
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If they're scrolling TikTok, they're not outside. They're not socializing in the real world.
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It takes away so much of what is so important at a crucial developmental stage.
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These young people have to learn how to engage face-to-face socially with individuals
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and groups and people in different places.
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And if you're online, you're not doing any of those things.
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And so many people like i'm on i'm on i am on facebook because i'm old and it's
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more old right then it doesn't leave a lot of hope for me i'll ask my students
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the first to tell you yeah i miss you look like you'd be on facebook well i am.
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I'm in a lot of local facebook groups because i think they're hilarious like
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sometimes they're useful right sometimes it's useful information for the community
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but 90 of the time it's just,
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hysterics I scroll these local Facebook groups because it just it's so
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funny it's the conversations anyway it's it's a
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laugh but a lot of the posts on the these these local Facebook groups where
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old people are complaining about things is you know so many are there was a
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group of youths outside and these boys in the park and he's gotten like yeah
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sometimes they're actually doing things that they shouldn't be doing but,
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I love it. I love like when I'm walking around, and maybe this is because I
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work in a secondary school and I'm not scared of teenagers, but when I'm walking
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around and I see groups of young people, no matter what they look like,
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what they're wearing, et cetera,
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just outside or BMXing in the park or hanging around in a corner and talking
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to each other, I'm so happy about that.
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If they don't have their phones in their hand when they're congregating and
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socializing, I'm like, yes, that's a win.
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Because you see it so much less often now than you did 10, 15 years ago.
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I first got here in 2010. So that's kind of my only point of reference for this country.
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But it feels rare that you see a group of youths.
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Loitering outside without phones in
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their hand i don't give them monkeys what they're loitering as long
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as they don't have their phones and they're not scrolling i'm like great cool you're
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being teenagers and there's all this data now
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about and i'm about to say something it's probably get me in real trouble as
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a teacher but why stop now there's so much data saying that like teenage drug
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use and teenage alcohol use is plummeting and i'm like it's because they're
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not they're not getting drunk in a field with their friends like what's the point of being
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a teenager in this country if you can't get pissed in a field with your friends
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isn't that the point of being a teenager in the uk so these kids are not and
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so there are benefits of it i guess.
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But at the same time i'm like you're missing you're missing valuable not to
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say every 15 year old needs to go to the park with a bottle of wine but for
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god's sake please go outside please socialize please make real life questionable
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decisions please learn please grow oh,
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please have these experiences that we all had when we were young because it's part of growing up.
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And I just feel like so many things are being taken away from them,
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the good and the bad, because of their phone addictions and they just want to
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sit in their house and scroll.
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But I'm going to keep talking and then I will shut up, I promise.
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The other side of this, right, it's not just the social media.
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It's the parenting and the parenting. I will always come back to the parents.
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And I'm not even talking about the parents not monitoring their social media use or their screen use.
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I'm talking about the culture of parents helicoptering and micromanaging and
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feeling that they need to know where their kid is every second of every day
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and not allowing them out of their sight.
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So what we actually have in this country is a mixture of social media and screen
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addiction, which is warping our brains.
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Every study shows that. And the younger you are, the worse it is.
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And combined with that, we have a culture of...
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Like parents see themselves at the center of this panopticon where they have
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to monitor all of their children constantly and they're absolutely terrified
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of giving their kids any kind of freedom.
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So no, they're not getting pissed in a park because they're on TikTok,
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but also their parents never let them out of their sight anyway.
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So they don't have any freedom. They don't have any ability to learn and grow
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on their own and develop any kind of independence. They're literally trapped
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in their houses in the room.
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So these two things feed off each other, right? Parents look at social media
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and they get scared of the world.
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So they lock their kids in their house. Kids get locked in their house.
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They spend more time on social media.
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And it's just like the whole thing just snowballs. And then you have these kids
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that come to school and they don't know how to function with other people their own age.
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They don't know how to problem solve. They don't know how to resolve conflicts.
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They don't know how they don't haven't developed any sort of social skills because
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the only time they're in a social
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environment is when they're in school monitored by staff who are also in.
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Like there's increased pressure on staff to monitor kids every
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second of every day because of safeguarding so they're never
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like they're never out of sight they're never allowed to
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just exist and learn themselves the the
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they're never let off the lead so that's my
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thought on it the whole thing can i ask a question there is an argument out
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there that allowing young people to explore social media whilst they're still
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at school enables school to support them to learn how to negotiate that risk.
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So there was an article recently in the TES which made this point that it's
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the only place where young people could negotiate the world of social media,
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but also have the support of responsible adults that will give them advice and
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guidance to understand how to use it in a responsible way.
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How would you respond to that argument?
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Well, I think I've got a view on that. There is one teacher,
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roughly to 30 students in a school, that's going to break down to something like that.
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How many of those students are going to reach out?
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Probably the ones who are asking for a second opinion, having spoken to their
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parents, not the children who have no one to speak to and aren't used to speaking
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to anybody and don't trust other people, i.e.
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Teachers. so I read that article and
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none of it gelled I genuinely I felt
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as though the writer had been told could you write an alternative
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view on this because nobody seems to be able to
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come up with a reason for young people to be on social media and he's thought
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could greet the most tenuous link is that teachers can guide them through it
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because very few very few young people are going to a teacher and saying I just
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wonder should I stop looking before I you know see something I shouldn't They're just not doing that.
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So for me, no, I don't think schools are the place to do that.
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And let's not forget that young people are supposed to be in school,
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education or some sort of training or employment until they're 18.
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So if they get it at 16, there's still going to be an environment where if that
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really was something they needed, they could access it. And I'll stop there.
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I find that a really, like, like you say, Lucy, I find it quite tenuous because
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obviously we teach about a lot of things like drug use, alcohol use, things like that.
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We're not encouraging them to go out and use it in order to find out whether
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or not it's good for, you know, so I don't think they need to use social media
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for us to be able to teach them about the dangers of those things.
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It I mean it's do you know what it's it isn't
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even just the social elements of it I think that are problematic I think it
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has absolutely changed their brain chemistry and the way that they learn like
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for us in education I saw a video on social media ironically about about it this week about.
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Effectively the dumbing down of education and what
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has happened as a result because we're dealing with young people who
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deal with everything in such bite-sized chunks
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because the longest video that they're looking at
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quite often is a minute long 60 seconds and so their attention spans have become
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so low and I did I did an activity with my year 11s last week and it was a 10
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minute activity which I think is a reasonable chunk of time like to chunk down
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some learning so it was a 10-minute activity,
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right, this is a task, explained it, set them off.
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I did not have them on task for 10 minutes. They were gone within 90 seconds.
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And so I spoke to one of my colleagues and she suggested chunking it down even further.
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So what I did was I broke it down and I broke, so it was annotation of a poem.
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And so I broke it down into 30 seconds, look at the title, 90 seconds, consider the context.
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Two minutes, look at the first stanza, two minutes, look at the second stanza
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they did stay on task better but I was like what have I done the exam's an hour
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and 45 minutes the exam is an hour and 45 minutes.
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Two hours and 15, one of them, two hours and 15. We can't do this.
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It's absolutely insane. And it just, it makes me understand why they say everything's
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boring because they're not getting the dopamine hit from us because we're asking
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for too much of their attention for too long.
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So it obviously, like I'm not minimizing any of the absolutely catastrophic
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effects on depression, like mental health.
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Like we've got the highest levels of mental health issues among
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young people that we've ever had of course social media is playing an absolutely
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massive part in that but they also are
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seeing school as this absolutely horrendous place
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that they're suffering because they're not getting their dopamine hits because
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of what social media has done to their brain chemistry but what really frustrates
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me is and I do agree with you right I do think it does start at home I think
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as parents I mean the irony of this is that I'm keeping my child occupied on
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a screen right now while I'm.
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I will take it away after it's over I promise there's a time and a place it's fine and but.
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So why is nobody cracking down on the companies that are actually the ones creating this problem?
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Like nobody's regulating them. Nobody's making sure that they are not pushing
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this harmful content onto young people.
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There was a family, wasn't there, of the young girl who took her life who was
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suing Instagram, I think, because they blamed the company for pushing the suicide ideation.
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Molly Russell I think is the case Yes I think that was it Carl and I agree with
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that family I understand why they blame social media,
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for that because what was the documentary with Matt and Emma Willis where I
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think they joined fresh they said that they were young people and I think it
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was within half an hour in their algorithm was suicide ideation,
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like even though they hadn't looked at anything remotely linked
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to that it was still pushed into their algorithm and they were
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being fed information on that you just think it's it
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is so dangerous as a
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medium what i fully support ban what what about those who say that social media
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is a lifesaver for young people who would otherwise feel completely isolated
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from their peer group young people who suffer from.
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Social anxiety, young people who have various mental health conditions,
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which mean that social media is their only means of escaping from what is otherwise
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a particularly cold and unfeeling world.
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And it acts as a prop to keep them connected to people who are feeling similar
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to themselves or able to support them. What about that argument?
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Because I've come across people who fiercely have
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defend social media for under 16
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on the grounds that their child
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went through a period like this and social media was was in their words a bit
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of a lifesaver i get that and i also sorry lisa no no no you go i promise i
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get that and i also get you know i've taught a number of students i was ahead
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of you for eight years so i know we'll.
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Spoken to a lot of students about this outside of the classroom.
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I've taught a lot of students,
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particularly queer students, LGBT students who grew up in extremely rigid or
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conservative with a small c or unwelcoming, unaccepting homes.
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And if it weren't for social media and connecting with people and realizing
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that there was actually hope and there was a world out there where they could
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be themselves and be happy, and they just needed to get there,
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they would have been in a very dark place or worse.
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I'm well aware that for some students, particularly if their daily lives are extremely difficult,
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social media can absolutely be a lifeline, and it can connect everybody,
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including young people, to information that's valuable, individuals that's valuable.
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It can give them a wider worldview. It can kind of get them out of their lives in a good way.
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But I think we have to look at the numbers and I think we have to look at the
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overall impact and I think we have to try to make decisions based on the biggest picture.
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And that sounds really horrible.
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And I'm aware of that. I'm aware that a ban for under-16s would take that lifeline
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away from some students. So maybe there's some compromise or some nuance that
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needs to be looked into. However...
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I just, I feel like there are bigger issues and, you know, the rewiring of our
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brains and the impact that is having on our ability to function,
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I feel needs to take priority right now.
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So I want to come back on that in a second, Carl, because it's a really good question.
19:17
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And I'll be really brief on that the question that you posed about young people
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who might be in ice you know living in isolation because of their their sort
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of you know issues their social anxieties and things like that and and I just
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wanted to say before we look at Neil's comment I just wanted to say that.
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Those children are probably some of the most vulnerable children in our society
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and probably the children we most need to protect in some ways from the harms
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of social media because if they're struggling with communications in the real world,
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then probably going online, they're more open to manipulation.
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There's a very creepy person on social media,
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I don't know what site but I see from time to time who says
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they're their friend I'm your friend don't forget
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I'm your friend and I'm here for you and you don't have to talk to your parents
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because I'm in it's really creepy and yet I can see how for some young people
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they would really really buy into it I mean I was talking to my son last night
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about things that I rabbit holes I went down in terms of books You know,
21:09
I read a book called The Borables, a series of books, and these kids had run
21:13
away from home and they lived in sheds and garages.
21:16
And I wanted to sleep in our garage.
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I mean, when young people, they immerse, well, I did anyway,
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completely immerse themselves in things.
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And so that would really concern me. I didn't know if somebody wanted to respond
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to Neil's comment, because I think it's quite a pertinent comment,
21:31
to be fair. Has anyone got anything?
21:33
Well, let's read it.
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If people are listening. Neil has said, if teachers do not respond to the child
21:41
that's in front of them, for example, their attention span, then they are fighting
21:45
a losing fight from the start.
21:46
The problem is that by doing that, we are actually colluding with the lack of
21:48
attention span. Neil's comment.
21:52
I think that's a fair comment. I think that's true. But how do we break the cycle?
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It's really, really difficult, isn't it? This show is brought to you in partnership
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It's Tom here from Teachers Talk Radio, just dropping in to tell you about Teachers Talk Connect 2026.
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he's added something there social media marijuana can relieve anxiety carl but
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that doesn't make it good for teenagers.
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We keep making the mistake that we think a phone is harmless.
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Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying that these are my views,
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putting forward views that I've heard, because I think it's important that in
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this discussion we address those points of view as well.
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I just want to throw in something. Sorry, Liz, I'll be very quick.
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I promise you. That's right.
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When I was young, back in the Jurassic period, we had a lot of people saying
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very similar things about people watching television.
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And me and probably most young people of my age, when I was about sort of 11
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or 12, would get up on a Saturday morning and invariably sit and watch TV,
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unless there was anything interesting happening otherwise.
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We'd sit and watch tv from sort of like 10
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o'clock in the morning through to possibly early
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evening and then our parents would come and watch a bit of tv could
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be watching tv for for 10 12 hours a day and the argument that was thrown forward
23:55
routinely was young people's attention spans have dropped considerably it's
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affecting their ability they've got square eyes they can't possibly focus on the world.
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And in fact, what's happened is that to the best of my knowledge, my eyes aren't square.
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So I'm just putting the argument that some people may say that this is just
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another classic rehash of middle-aged moral panic because they're a bit frightened
24:27
about the things that in the modern world are happening.
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And whereas they used to moan about TV and punk rockers, now it's people on
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social media and algorithms.
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What do you think about that viewpoint? I feel, right, so I hate sounding like
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some old art who hates everything new and young.
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And I really, really, really, like, my life goal is to just not turn into...
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An old person, whatever. I hate it. And I hate hearing myself say things that
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my parents used to say when I was a kid or I hear my grandparents.
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I hate it coming out of my mouth. But I don't hate this because all of the data
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supports exactly what we're saying.
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All of the studies that have been done have shown just how much social media
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and constant screen time is affecting our brains and it is affecting our attention span.
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It is affecting our ability to engage with people. It is affecting our social
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and problem-solving abilities. Like, everything shows this.
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There is no, like, this is literally different because we've proven that it's
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different. And I understand.
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10, 15 years ago, I remember my first couple years of teaching,
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and all the old, older teachers were lamenting the phone use and whatever.
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And I thought, like, no, I get why they shouldn't be in schools. I get that.
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But you can't, like, times are changing. The world is changing.
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Technology is changing. Embrace
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it. Oh, wow, this is great. You can communicate with people in China.
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Like, I thought it was a good thing. And the internet in general is a good thing.
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But we didn't have the data yet.
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And I hadn't seen the regression across the past 15 years of my own students
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and their ability to focus on anything.
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I hadn't seen it long. I mean, 15 years isn't long term, but you know what I
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mean? I hadn't witnessed it and we didn't have the data yet.
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And now we do. So this is different. This is literally different from television.
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This is literally different even from
26:23
video games, which are notorious for dopamine-addicted people as well.
26:27
It's even worse than that. And everything...
26:31
Proves it so yeah i'm gonna
26:34
sound i'm gonna sound like a complaining boomer and and that's and
26:37
that's fine because it is different and
26:40
we know it's different so we have to do something otherwise we're like we're
26:46
we are in so much trouble we are but also television is produced and edited
26:53
it has to go through quality control certainly used to and so.
27:00
So so you know what we were being fed
27:03
was one directional we absorbed it but we were you know i mean good grief carl
27:10
you're probably a similar age to me when we were children we were watching adverts
27:14
these adverts where a group of children were pulling little dinghy with a sail across a,
27:23
Then it hits the power lines and they all die. A little girl who picked up a
27:28
sparkler in her glove and then her hand.
27:31
We were shown some terrifying, terrifying stuff that genuinely has made,
27:38
you know, so it's not as if, you know, we weren't given messaging or important
27:43
information because we were.
27:46
But the thing is, we were told it.
27:48
We chose to listen or not. And invariably, we just did because the telly said.
27:53
And so you will die if you touch a sparkler.
27:55
It's as simple as that. But, you know, so we learned stuff from it in the same
27:59
way that we might say we young people learn things from social media,
28:03
but we couldn't interact back.
28:06
And it couldn't morph the message into something different.
28:10
The more somebody watched it, the more it gained traction or interest.
28:14
And so it was a, I mean, you're right.
28:18
I mean, I remember the square eyes sitting too close to the television.
28:21
It's bad for you. All of these things. I remember it well, but it was a one dimensional thing.
28:28
You watched the telly and then you turned in, you got told, I mean, good grief.
28:31
You know, I got told off having my head in a book, you know,
28:34
you get your head out of that book, go outside and do something,
28:36
you know, and, and talking of books, I've got my diaries from when I was 13
28:40
years old and I was reading Wuthering Heights.
28:43
So I've got in there, Poldark, Wuthering Heights, all these books.
28:48
And I'm not kidding. I've got Wuthering Heights.
28:49
And I've tried to sit down and read it. And even I don't have the attention span to read it now.
28:55
And I'm ashamed of myself for that. I can't believe it.
28:59
And Liz, your point about the teaching and breaking it down into really small
29:03
chunks, okay, it's like...
29:06
If you're training for a marathon, you don't run 26 miles on the same day.
29:10
And if we want to get them back to having some kind of attention span,
29:14
I used to say to my daughter, none of my kids read, but my daughter in particular
29:18
never, ever has liked reading.
29:19
And I said, just five minutes a day. And then you've got to put the book down
29:23
after five minutes and then you'll be cross because you wanted to read more.
29:27
But that will bring it. No, she hasn't even tried.
29:29
It's just gone. So much of those skills and
29:32
that interest is gone because it's been replaced by a
29:35
phone on a laptop but this is what upsets me about
29:38
the schools like you you actually have people out there
29:41
who are advocating for schools to change their entire approach
29:44
and for teaching to change and to accommodate and i think this is what neil
29:48
was saying to accommodate the shrunken attention spans and just embrace that
29:54
somehow as if we don't have a professional duty to prepare the students for
29:59
the exams that everybody has to take whether you like it i hate them i think
30:02
the system's ridiculous,
30:03
but I want my students to be as prepared as they can be because the exam grades
30:07
open doors for the future.
30:08
And that is literally my job. So I'm not going to.
30:12
Reduce everything to 90 second chunks. If you're training for a marathon,
30:16
you don't run for 90 seconds and stop and then on the day show up and expect to run 26.
30:20
So you have to build them up. We have to fight against this.
30:25
We have to increase their focus again.
30:27
But the more these students become addicted, the more time these young people
30:32
spend on their phones and on social media in particular, the harder and harder and harder that gets.
30:36
And the less and less likely it is that they're going to eventually, by the end of year 11,
30:40
get to a point where they can reach their potential and get
30:43
the grades are capable of getting and have the most doors open for
30:45
them for their future options it starts
30:49
so young and it's it we cannot be like
30:52
people who sit there saying times have changed school hasn't changed
30:55
since the victorian time okay and school the school is not the problem here
31:01
the education i mean there are a lot of things wrong with the education system
31:03
i'll be the first to say but expecting kids to focus for more than 90 seconds
31:07
at a time or sit still at a desk is not one of them at all.
31:13
Liz, I jumped in a little bit earlier and you were just about to start something.
31:17
I just want to give you a chance.
31:19
Perimenopausal brain means I cannot remember at all what it is that I was going to say.
31:26
I do wonder if it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation with the social anxiety.
31:32
And I don't know whether it's the social media that has effectively started
31:36
that social anxiety And then by this kind of self-medicating with social media,
31:41
if it's this just perpetual thing.
31:43
I mean, I've had emails sent to me about students' comfort and coping strategies
31:49
being scrolling social media.
31:51
Like, you know, they find comfort
31:52
in that. They find that that constant scroll makes them feel better.
31:56
And while I understand that it's important for us to help young people, yeah.
32:05
Would we advise, you know, if midweek glass of wine helped a 14-year-old cope
32:10
with their social anxiety, would we suggest that they did that? No, we wouldn't.
32:15
So scrolling social media feels a little bit like we are perpetuating the problem.
32:21
And if we are going to say, okay, they find their comfort in social media,
32:25
it keeps them connected with the world around them.
32:27
Isn't that more argument for regulating the companies in the first place so
32:32
that the content that then is being pushed to young people is healthy,
32:38
supportive, not kind of this brainwashing...
32:44
Nonsense, filth, whatever it is, filth. Gosh, how old am I?
32:50
Mary.
32:56
Oh, Liz, I've got the surname for words like that, not you.
33:02
Make it healthy content, for goodness sake. I just feel so sorry for young people now,
33:08
growing up in this environment where they already,
33:12
like the very condition of being a teenager means
33:16
that you don't know who you are and you really struggle to find out
33:19
who you are and your peer group is enough of a
33:21
pressure in that circumstance of trying
33:24
to work out who you are then when you add this other dimension
33:28
of what people on social media who you see for 60 seconds
33:31
are telling you what you should be as well just not knowing who you are or how
33:37
to be without everybody else it's so difficult like I would not want to go back
33:42
now and be 15 and live the life that they live. Be 15 now.
33:49
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'd love to go back and be 15 in the 90s. Top notch.
33:55
Because we didn't have these pressures. It wasn't the same. It wasn't like this.
33:59
And I think we're looking at the wrong solutions, I think.
34:07
This is the only solution that I think we actually reasonably will do because
34:10
no one's going to regulate the companies.
34:12
They are going to be allowed to carry on and do what, because that's just the
34:15
way that it is because they just have such a monopoly over the market.
34:21
We're not going to interfere with that. So we have to take whatever strategies
34:25
we can to, to do it. And I think.
34:30
I agree. Parents do have a part to play in it, but I think it needs to be bigger.
34:36
And on the topic of being bigger, you know what I said before about the content
34:41
being the issue, but also the opportunity cost of if they're on their phone,
34:44
they're not doing something else.
34:45
I think we need investment in third spaces for young people.
34:52
Where are they supposed to go? okay so yes we want them outside and but ideally
34:58
ideally right there's more to do than just hang around in a street corner like
35:01
there's there's a park by my house where kids bmx and kick a ball around and
35:05
stuff and you see them wandering around and that's great that's that's wonderful.
35:09
Not everybody lives next to a park like that there are
35:12
so few spaces where teenagers can go
35:15
and hang out and exist without spending exorbitant amounts of
35:17
money that most of them don't have that are relatively safe
35:21
and clean if you live in a
35:25
large city in particular in in a tower block you probably don't have a garden
35:29
you don't have one of those those spaces nearby where are where are young people
35:34
meant to go i grew up on an island where there wasn't anything to do you could
35:38
go to the beach which i couldn't do because i got migraines from the sunlight.
35:42
You could go to the cinema, which gets really boring if there's nothing out that you want to see.
35:48
You could walk around a horrible mall. And expensive. A lot of people didn't have money for that.
35:51
Or if you could see over the bar, at a bar, they would serve you.
35:55
So what you had was people from the age of about 14 going out drinking in clubs
36:01
that they had absolutely no business in, were incredibly dangerous.
36:04
Getting up to all sports.
36:06
And that was just the culture. That was just what people did.
36:09
And obviously, that's not an option. that shouldn't be an option so what i know
36:14
what it's like to be a teenager and be like i want to do like i don't want to
36:17
be at home i don't want to i want to go out with my friends but there's
36:21
nothing to do except get up to to trouble and that's part of the reason it just
36:26
comes back it just feeds back on itself there's nowhere to go as they see inside
36:29
as well can i can i can i raise two points just because i think it it's important
36:33
that at some point they're aired not that,
36:36
again, they're necessarily my point of view.
36:39
One is the accusation of bad science.
36:43
There's a lot of what I've heard, and I'm not an expert in these matters,
36:47
but what I've heard is there's a lot of bad science involved in things,
36:52
discussions about this issue, and much of it that has been replicated by Jonathan
36:58
Haidt in his book, bestselling book, the anxious generation.
37:02
For example, we all use, and I'm as guilty as anybody, of the phrase dopamine hit.
37:09
Apparently there is no such thing. Dopamine does not spike when you are in a,
37:15
it's a phrase that's been injected into popular understanding because it helps
37:21
us to understand a feeling or a concept that we have.
37:25
But actually, that's not how the brain works.
37:29
Dopamine does not spike when we have a pleasurable experience in that way.
37:34
That's my understanding from science. and
37:38
similarly there is a an idea that that's
37:41
thrown around that young people's brains are plastic insofar as they're very
37:47
malleable they're growing they're developing they're still shaping in lots of
37:51
different ways and consequently their brains are at a particularly vulnerable
37:55
stage of development and their exposure to.
38:00
You know, things like social media can warp that development in a manner that
38:04
then can be difficult to undo when they're older.
38:08
But I've heard, and again, I am very welcome to be, you know,
38:14
put right on this, but I've heard that there's no real evidence that that's
38:20
actually true. There's any proper signs behind that.
38:22
And that a lot of the studies into the impact of social media,
38:26
one a very short term because of
38:30
course it's not been around that long two they're
38:33
on very short samples small samples so it's
38:37
very difficult to extrapolate beyond that and three
38:41
that when you try to analyze something like this you have to untangle it from
38:46
so many other factors that in the end any causal connection is almost impossible
38:52
to prove so what about those people that argue that the science here is actually not backing up what,
39:00
and the studies are not backing, really backing up what people say.
39:04
This is basically us saying, or society saying, we don't like this.
39:09
It doesn't look or feel good to us.
39:11
So we're going to use some quasi-science to just back it up.
39:15
What would people say in response to that view?
39:19
Okay, so if we say that the science doesn't provide us enough evidence that it's causing harm,
39:25
what is causing harm, and it cannot be denied that it would cause harm,
39:30
is young people seeing ideologies in terms of size, appearance.
39:36
Seeing pornography, being exposed to things that they shouldn't see.
39:41
Now, maybe that causes no harm whatsoever, but I very much doubt it somehow.
39:46
So even if the science isn't there, just the algorithms and how they work is
39:53
leading children to see things that they shouldn't see.
39:55
So even if it's not causing harm, and I would argue every day of the week that
40:00
it is causing harm and that the science not being able to entirely substantiate
40:06
that due to there's not been enough time,
40:08
yet social media is still relatively new in the sort of whole evolution of humans, etc.
40:13
Etc but there is we are seeing
40:16
evidence in our own eyes and
40:19
ears and and the problem is you can say we should leave it up to the parents
40:25
it's up to parents to decide if they want their children to go on social media
40:28
and if they don't then then they can take control of that and it's just not
40:33
so straightforward and and and so I feel like somebody does have to step in
40:37
and just in case it's harmful,
40:39
just in case it's not good for them, I would still support banning it.
40:44
I personally wonder who is questioning the science and whether they have some
40:48
involvement in either pushing their own narratives through social media or if
40:54
they work in the tech industry.
40:55
Because let's not forget that all of the people who've created these things,
40:59
I think there's a person, my husband read a book called Stolen Focus.
41:03
Now, I haven't read it yet, but it talks...
41:05
He said it's fantastic and I must read it. And in that, he talks about how,
41:10
you know, even as an adult, when social media was taken away from him,
41:14
he went to a cabin or something somewhere, you know, he was unable.
41:18
You know, it took him a long time to deal with not having something to reach
41:22
for, something to look at. Do you see what I mean?
41:24
And I think anybody who is living like that, I do it.
41:28
First thing I do in the morning is pick up my phone and I tell myself,
41:31
I want to see what the time is, but I haven't bought myself a clock radio or
41:34
something that would tell me without picking up my phone, because I know that
41:37
that's where I'm going to go to.
41:39
If I had a clock on my wall, I would look at my clock and then I would pick up my phone.
41:43
So really, you know, we have become slaves to it. It buzzes.
41:47
I pick it up if I'm available.
41:49
The only thing with me is I am able to go for long periods of time without checking
41:54
in on social media if I'm doing something.
41:56
And I can live with that mostly.
41:59
But yeah, I don't care for the.
42:03
Anti-science argument until science turns around
42:07
and says do you know what we have looked at this and
42:10
there is no evidence that it causes harm then
42:13
I think we have to probably run along the lines
42:16
that it does I think that we are safer protecting children from an unknown than
42:21
assuming that we're probably right and it's probably okay and while I've got
42:26
the conch or conch as we call it may I just tell you again about Hachette Learning
42:31
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42:50
Anthony's got a good one. He says, presumably, oh yeah, sorry,
42:53
I was going to say, presumably young people, this is Anthony,
42:56
presumably young people can still correspond with their friends via text-based
43:00
services or chats via online games.
43:03
If that's the case, I don't believe banning social media is a big deal.
43:06
And that raises the whole question of what is social media? How do you define
43:11
it? How do you define what the platforms are that you would ban? Sorry.
43:15
No, I was just going to read Anthony's comment and say that's fair enough.
43:19
One of the biggest pushbacks we have about, you know, going schools,
43:22
banning phones and going phone free, like put them in a box or in a bag or something
43:26
at the beginning of the day.
43:28
Parents, I need to contact my child. Brick phones exist. Get a 10 pound one from Tesco.
43:32
Problem solved. What did parents do before they could track with a little blue
43:37
dot their kid walking on the way home from school?
43:39
And by the same token, what did parents do who are struggling to keep roofs
43:44
up their heads and going to work all the time and not spending time monitoring their kids?
43:49
What did parents do to parent before they could just hand a screen to their children.
43:53
Like people who say, make excuses saying, oh, we need to, parents need to know
43:58
where the kid is every second of the day.
44:01
We had 2,000 years without that just recently.
44:06
Parents can't manage having to work two jobs because the cost of living and
44:10
they don't have books in the house and they're really, really struggling.
44:15
Cool. So have thousands of generations of human beings before they had screens
44:19
to put their kids in front of. How do people cope that poverty isn't new?
44:23
Struggling isn't new? Parenting isn't new? They're literally all just excuses.
44:28
You do not need to have a phone a smartphone
44:31
your child does not need access to a smartphone 24 7
44:34
for them to be safe or you to parent properly you
44:38
do not need to put your kid in front of a screen to do
44:41
your job as a parent and if people are just making excuses and
44:43
excuses and excuses I'm not I'd like
44:46
I'm so far beyond not interested to listen
44:49
to them like I don't I don't understand why we're giving
44:52
those views any time or
44:55
any energy it really comes back to this is
44:58
a new technological development human beings have coped before
45:01
you it's not necessarily making your life any better
45:04
you don't actually need to use it please stop
45:07
using it as an excuse and do your
45:10
job as a parent because the parents they ain't parenting and it's coming back
45:13
on the government to make regulations the companies to sort out their horrible
45:17
stuff which they probably should do anyway because it's vile and there's another
45:20
word for you it's coming back on the schools to manage a problem that is starting
45:25
at home because the parents ain't parenting.
45:29
So, again, yeah, get your kid a brick phone. They don't need social media.
45:33
You don't need to check them.
45:34
You really, really don't. But the schools that are taking the approach of,
45:39
yeah, sure, you can have an iPhone, you can have an Android, great.
45:41
Put it in this bag at the beginning of the day and check it out at the end.
45:44
And then you can have it on the way to and from school. Like,
45:46
I don't, that's the best of all worlds, surely. I don't understand why there's
45:52
still pushback because you're going to have medical exemptions. My sister's diabetic.
45:56
She has an app on her phone that monitors her sugars.
46:00
It sends her alerts. I have diabetic students who have the same thing.
46:04
Obviously, they'll be allowed, okay?
46:06
People who need their phone for an actual, like, they have to for their physical
46:10
health, they will be allowed to.
46:13
We're not going to endanger. But that's not social media.
46:16
So you can have a smartphone and by banning social media for under 18s,
46:22
you know, like under 16, sorry, you can go into a supermarket when you're seven
46:28
and you can buy things if you've got five pounds in your hand,
46:31
but you can't buy a can of beer or a lager.
46:35
So you can be in a world but not access all of the world in it.
46:41
I mean, that's such a good point about, you know, some kids needing to have
46:45
their phones to monitor blood sugars and things.
46:48
The smartphone issue, the phones in school issue would be lessened enormously
46:54
by not having social media access until they're older.
46:59
Actually, a thing that I have a problem with and I have a solution to is the ability
47:06
access to social media at 16 on your 16th birthday, because I'm an August birthday
47:13
kind of person. So I would have been the last person.
47:17
Everyone would have left school and I still wouldn't have been able to connect on social media.
47:22
And I resent, and I didn't resent, you know, but I always felt that the time
47:27
of year my birthday was because I had August the 3rd for presents and cards and things.
47:32
But on August the 3rd, I turned 16 and I was chuffed to bits or 15, say.
47:38
We went to school and on the first day, there were already two or three people
47:41
having their 16th birthdays and it drove me mad. I hated it.
47:46
So the idea that you've then got kids all throughout the year going,
47:50
yay, I've got whatever the latest social media is and other kids who are still excluded,
47:55
not to mention, I would probably do better in my GCSEs if I tried hard, obviously,
48:01
but I would probably do better because I wouldn't have the distraction of this
48:04
new shiny social media thing that's just come into my world,
48:07
the same as the September birthdays and the October birthdays,
48:11
etc, because I wouldn't have those distractions.
48:14
And so my solution is not when you're 16, but when you finish year 11.
48:19
And I would tie it in with, you know, when HMRC send your national insurance code,
48:27
they are able to identify every person in this country who turns 16 in the following
48:33
year because it comes when you're about 15.
48:35
And so what my solution would be is that in the end of June or whatever.
48:41
After all the GCSEs are over, HMRC sends a code, they can send it electronically,
48:46
and you have to use that code to input all the social media sites to be able to access them.
48:53
That way everyone gets it at the same time.
48:55
Nobody in year 11 is on social media whatsoever so they can concentrate on their
48:59
exams. And then when they go to sit
49:02
form if they're going to be stupid and and you know prioritize social
49:05
media over their a-levels then surely that's what
49:08
we're doing anyway is sorting out who is right to
49:11
go to university and and who isn't do you get what
49:14
I mean actually make it dependent on the exam results no no no no no I just
49:21
when they leave when they leave when they leave the end of your love it and
49:27
then it's the same time because I was thinking that too if you make it 16 you're
49:31
just going to have like all the younger kids in that year,
49:33
it's going to be so excruciatingly horrible and you don't get rid of the problem
49:36
in year 11 anyway. So yeah.
49:38
Yeah. One of the things that's nice about the idea of a social media ban for
49:42
me as a head teacher is that one of the issues about banning smartphones from
49:48
schools is that actually,
49:50
on the whole, the problem that young people experience is not one that they experience in schools.
49:58
There are very very few schools where young
50:01
people are regularly using phones these
50:05
days i mean there are different ways in which schools achieve it
50:08
and there are there are all sorts of issues about that but there are very few
50:12
schools where you know young people have unfettered access to phones but of
50:17
course the moment they walk out the door they do have unfettered access and
50:21
at that point all manner of things happen which then do not have a knock-on
50:25
effect in schools so the the idea of social media,
50:28
a ban on social media has an appeal because it has an impact on what happens
50:34
to a young person outside of school when they are literally unprotected and have free access to it.
50:41
But can I ask, do you think WhatsApp is social media?
50:48
Technically it is apparently, but you're
50:52
you are in control to a
50:55
certain extent on who you're in contact
50:58
with whatsapp isn't really randomly pushing you
51:01
information whereas any other like
51:04
tiktok instagram facebook facebook they
51:07
don't use facebook but that's just you know
51:11
i always use the example of the the
51:14
killing of charlie kirk like i would not have sought
51:17
that out i would not have looked for
51:20
that at all but on my social media there it was presented to me yeah because
51:27
and there's nothing in my algorithm which would suggest that you know i get
51:31
things about calligraphy and you know air fryer baking and all that sort of
51:34
thing it just it wouldn't have ended up like.
51:38
Being in my algorithm but I got it I saw it and with
51:42
things like whatsapp that doesn't that doesn't
51:45
I know that you know obviously you get the occasional
51:48
unsolicited message or incorrect message or whatever
51:51
but it's very very rare it wouldn't be daily so
51:55
I don't think that whatsapp is and I just wanted to come
51:58
back Carl to the the medical thing there was sorry the
52:00
science thing there was an article in the British Medical
52:03
Journal this week about doctors declaring social
52:07
media use for young people a public health emergency so
52:11
i do think there is so it
52:15
might not be like the dopamine hit it might not be kind of the chemical imbalance
52:19
element of it but the the effects that it's having and the pressures that it's
52:25
putting on places like cams and things like that that are were already prior
52:30
to social media already a massively stretched service,
52:34
now we've got such a high number of people who inevitably are affected by their social media use.
52:40
Those services are ineffective.
52:42
Kids are on waiting lists for five years, their entire educational time. And it's because...
52:49
There are things outside that we can try and do.
52:53
I don't know if it's science-based. I don't know how we would quantify it,
53:00
but I can't read the full article in the British Medical Journal,
53:03
unfortunately, because I'm not a member.
53:05
But it says that Ofsted have got immediate powers to check schools' mobile phone
53:10
policies, with schools expected to be phone-free by default.
53:14
The potential ban on social media for under-16 as far as Australia's introduction
53:17
of a similar policy in December.
53:19
France denmark and new zealand are considering similar measures
53:22
like we're not talking about it's not unique to
53:25
us it is an international problem yeah
53:28
yeah okay whatsapp anybody
53:31
else got a view because my view is that if you are defining
53:35
if you are proposing a ban on social media i
53:38
would argue that whatsapp does have enough of enough of
53:41
the features of social media to be
53:44
also included in the ban and i know that australia hasn't
53:48
done that and that's a source of discussion and
53:51
some would say as you say liz that whatsapp is
53:55
not algorithm driven therefore content
53:59
doesn't appear which you didn't
54:02
necessarily ask for but it
54:04
nevertheless facilitates many of the other dangers that
54:08
social media possesses to young people in terms of a
54:11
fear of missing out a requirement that they
54:14
are constantly in contact with one another and also
54:18
possibly as we say encouraging young
54:20
people to stay indoors or at least in an insular world rather than in a more
54:27
real interactive world i don't think because if you're sorry lisa because if
54:32
you're if you're going to say what's up is social media based on that then you
54:35
have to then like you can set up group chats.
54:39
With your message, whatever your phone's default messaging services,
54:43
you can set up group chats there.
54:45
So then if you're banning WhatsApp on the ground that is social media,
54:49
you might as well ban the whole smartphone.
54:50
Because as long as they can create a group chat, then you still have that particular
54:53
problem. But I'm with Liz.
54:55
I think the issue is algorithm based. And WhatsApp, I think WhatsApp is a reasonable
55:00
compromise for students to still be able to like create school chats and friend
55:05
chats and family chats and stay in touch that way and receive information back
55:09
and forth that way without having all this external stuff forced on them that they never necessarily.
55:15
Even searched for. I think that's the main issue.
55:18
And you don't have the constant scrolling on the feed.
55:21
It's the scrolling on the feed and the bitty information.
55:25
And then it's the actual content that's being shown to them.
55:29
I think those are the two main issues, not the not the
55:32
group chat thing i mean we've had before smartphones we were
55:35
in group chats on msn messenger and aol and icq and
55:38
we had all these internet base and
55:41
those have those were like 10 years before any of
55:45
the the phone-based group chats and i feel like yeah
55:49
it had i mean cyber bullying happened that's for i'm sure there
55:52
were some negatives absolutely some negatives there
55:55
and people sharing photos you know when she wasn't invited
55:58
like it still happens but i just
56:01
feel like whatsapp is is clearly in the
56:04
other side there's the algorithm algorithm based doom scrolling and then there's
56:09
the group chat type apps and whatsapp's over there and i feel like if we ban
56:15
those that is going to cause a whole separate set of problems and it's gonna
56:19
like that is a slippery slope.
56:22
But the algorithm-based doom-scrolling apps are what need to go, in my view.
56:28
Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's a difficult one because when my daughter was,
56:33
I don't know, 12 or 13, they started, they must, I don't know if it was WhatsApp
56:38
or what, but that was how they.
56:41
Sort of before social media was something, I don't know, maybe we'd all decided
56:46
not to let them have it. But anyway, that was what they communicated on.
56:49
And there would still be that bullying element because my daughter used to come
56:53
down and say, so-and-so just said, you know, so-and-so.
56:56
And I don't think that's very nice. And then I would say, well, you know
57:00
I would leave it or whatever so you
57:03
I guess you can't shield them from everything when I was at
57:05
school my best friend Nikki who lived around the corner from me
57:08
and I would go out all evening around
57:11
the village on our roller skates or whatever and then we would
57:14
go home and we would write a letter to each other like it is natural
57:17
for young kids to want to contact and she always
57:20
used to start mine yo loose and then there'd be all kinds
57:23
of there'd be honestly it was so cute and I've gotten
57:25
somewhere and then there'd be pictures and cartoons and oh
57:29
my god Mikey's so handsome and stuff do you
57:32
get what I mean it was just daft everything that came into your
57:34
head and then we'd swap letters and you know so kids have always wanted to be
57:38
in control and I guess that there were probably some kids who had nasty letters
57:42
passed to them that they would have looked in their bags in the evening and
57:46
found something mean so I mean you can't that those kinds of things probably have always existed.
57:53
And, you know, we're much more public, actually, because kids could be bitchy
57:57
to your face, whereas now they don't have to.
57:59
The same as a bloke doesn't have to, you know, boyfriend doesn't have to tell
58:03
you in person, really sorry, but that's the end of the relationship and just
58:06
send a message and off it goes, you know.
58:09
So it's that same kind of thing where it's removed that contact.
58:12
That face-to-face contact.
58:14
But I think that's already, I don't think WhatsApp should be banned.
58:19
Okay, it's an interesting one, because I have a feeling that we are heading
58:24
for some kind of formal social media ban, or at least a heavy restriction on
58:29
social media use for young people.
58:31
But I also have a concern that what we will be doing in two or three years'
58:37
time is having exactly the same conversation with almost the same arguments
58:43
against other platforms that have emerged in a sort of, you know.
58:48
Multi-headed hydro approach where tech has developed better versions of WhatsApp,
58:54
better versions of other platforms that don't have some of the features that
58:58
are in the legislation, but nevertheless are very harmful.
59:01
Because I've seen plenty of bullying on WhatsApp in school, plenty of young
59:06
people who have been made to feel really bad about themselves in WhatsApp.
59:11
So WhatsApp is by no means a harmless platform as far as young people's interactions are concerned.
59:18
And I think that there is a danger that we, I mean, I know, Ray,
59:24
you called it a slippery slope.
59:25
We have to make decisions about where we draw the line on lots of things.
59:28
And we we do make those decisions and constantly recalibrate
59:32
them depending on our you know judgment of the evidence and our consideration
59:37
of how you know much harm is being created and so on but nevertheless i mean
59:42
i i have raised that question because i think there is a very real matter of
59:47
deciding what is social media and what is not yeah where's the line.
59:52
And where is the line? Yeah. And also, when you're doing that and you're defining
59:57
it, there is the potential for bad legislation insofar as it defines things
1:00:03
in a way that is either easily, you know,
1:00:07
circumnavigated or is actually counterproductive.
1:00:10
So that i think is why the government
1:00:13
has decided not to immediately support
1:00:16
the the lord's ban and instead take a
1:00:19
six-month consultation and i think actually that approach is probably the right
1:00:25
one and i now will come out and say i'm in favor of a ban i am in favor of a
1:00:31
ban i know i put forward lots of arguments against but that's not me i'm just
1:00:35
trying to offer a different view i am in.
1:00:38
But I think that, you know,
1:00:41
having said all of that, a ban is not a panacea.
1:00:45
There are still dangers and it's getting the legislation right,
1:00:50
making it sufficiently flexible so that as new technology drives new platforms and new developments,
1:00:58
the legislation is able to cope with that because for sure, we all agree,
1:01:04
there's a lot of things that
1:01:04
big technology companies like big food companies
1:01:07
their whole business model is premised
1:01:11
on the basis of trying to get people coming keep coming back and consuming more
1:01:16
and more and more and what you need is regulation to prevent that tendency because
1:01:21
they're companies they want to make profits that's their reason for being and
1:01:25
government and the state has a role in regulating And for far too long, we've, you know.
1:01:32
Thrown out statements like the nanny state or you can't control things.
1:01:36
It'll be a nanny state and so on. When actually in human history,
1:01:40
we've always had to draw the line somewhere.
1:01:42
We've always had to regulate, particularly with young people,
1:01:46
because human nature is such that if you allow people complete unfettered access
1:01:51
to something, then ultimately they will destroy themselves.
1:01:55
They will become consumed by something which ultimately is not really in the
1:02:01
best interest of wider society.
1:02:03
And there'll always be a workaround, I feel like. So keeping up with the legislation
1:02:09
and something like YouTube, like where does that fall?
1:02:12
Because, you know, that's a medium that, you know, my son watches YouTube clips
1:02:19
and things like that of things that he's interested in.
1:02:22
Obviously like a monitored version because i
1:02:25
want to be in control of it but that is
1:02:28
that considered social media because that's a way of pushing material to young
1:02:33
people does there then become work rounds on things like that and it's like
1:02:37
right well if we can't use this platform we'll use this platform or we'll create
1:02:40
a new platform that doesn't meet that definition of social media but we can
1:02:45
still attract young people,
1:02:47
it's a minefield,
1:02:50
isn't it? And it's a very difficult.
1:02:53
One to combat and we like you say carl
1:02:56
we have to find a way the government has to find a way to keep
1:02:59
up with it yeah there's no legislation probably
1:03:03
can't be perfect and it can't cover everything
1:03:06
and and all possibilities but i
1:03:09
think that responsible government has to consider and
1:03:12
reflect on the evidence enough having said that
1:03:15
i do think it's right that we act and
1:03:18
we act soon because I don't think we can spend
1:03:21
the next two or three years pondering the rights
1:03:24
and wrongs of this and the evidence and whether we're
1:03:27
absolutely certain as to the long-term effects of it
1:03:30
because ultimately we feel as
1:03:33
a society I think pretty uncomfortable with
1:03:37
what's happening not only with young people but let's
1:03:39
be frank with with adults as well and I
1:03:42
think the balance of power has moved too far
1:03:46
towards the technology companies and too
1:03:49
far away from the more responsible messaging
1:03:53
that you know you and I Lucy were subjected to
1:03:56
with those little public information films back in the day which actually although
1:04:02
they did scare us a little bit at times they've lasted in the memory and they
1:04:07
came from a place of saying adults have to be adults and their job is to help.
1:04:14
Society to actually negotiate the worst aspects of human nature and to bring out the best.
1:04:21
But you know what's interesting? Those adverts now, those ones that we were,
1:04:25
they would never, ever dream of showing kids that.
1:04:28
They would say they were harmful, the same as Lady Bird fairy tales books.
1:04:32
You know, they would have to be sanitized and you would never have to see the
1:04:35
end result, which was the boat, the sail, the mast hitting the pylons and things.
1:04:41
And I think in some ways we're poorer for it because I think that young people
1:04:46
don't, if you don't show them what they need to be scared of, they won't know.
1:04:51
But in terms of having a consultation, now obviously I work in politics as a
1:04:57
counsellor and everything has a consultation and very often consultation means very little.
1:05:05
It's just something you have to do and very often the questions are written
1:05:09
in such a way that the outcome doesn't have to be dependent on what comes out of this.
1:05:15
And I really hope that if they are having a, well, they will have a consultation
1:05:19
on this, I very much hope that it will be a meaningful consultation and not
1:05:23
just a tick box exercise to be able to rubber stamp a decision that's made.
1:05:27
It really is important that this is a consultation that takes into account a
1:05:33
range of different ideas and opinions.
1:05:35
I think that the discussions, you're absolutely right, is about YouTube.
1:05:38
I hadn't even thought about YouTube. How does everything fit into this?
1:05:42
How do we monitor what people can access? It's not going to be easy.
1:05:46
And actually, I can't, you know, we can't be too hasty in this and then end
1:05:53
up with a situation where it didn't work or it looks like it's not going to
1:05:58
work and then it's completely pulled.
1:06:00
And so, yeah, it's got to be done properly.
1:06:03
Place to finish yeah place to finish thank you everybody thank you to everyone
1:06:08
who's tuned in and joined in with us online we're really appreciative of your.