Why do we set teens loose in the twisted world on social media?

No parent sets out to fail their child. We all make the best decisions we can with the information to hand – and none of us should have to live with regret about how we raised our sons and daughters.

Yet in recent times, more and more parents have been telling me the same thing. If only they hadn't handed over that first smartphone. If only they had waited a little longer.

Of course, they believed they were doing the right thing – keeping their children connected with their friends and relatives, and safe when they're outside.

A generation ago, they could never have imagined a world in which their ten-year-old might stumble across violent or explicit sexual material before breakfast, or spend more time aimlessly scrolling alone than playing with friends.

And yet, quietly and insidiously, this has become normal. 

Not because parents stopped caring, but because the digital world children now inhabit has raced ahead of our laws, our safeguards and our societal norms.

The dangers in that environment couldn't be more real – or serious. Online grooming offences have risen sharply in recent years.

Youngsters are routinely exposed to violent footage, extreme pornography, misogyny, racism and content that promotes self-harm or eating disorders.

I'll never forget the tale one parent told me of inviting their son's eight-year-old friend round for a sleepover, unaware that he'd brought his iPad with him. 

They only found out the next morning when their young son, anxious and upset, revealed that his friend had showed him disturbing pornographic material on the tablet.

Countless parents have spoken to me of watching their primary school-aged children retreating into themselves – later discovering it's because they had been victims of appalling bullying on school WhatsApp groups.

No parent would consciously choose this exposure for their child. 

Yet the intense pressure – often from children themselves – to be given smartphones, and with them unrestricted access to social media, means many parents feel they have little choice.

But we are now facing a long-overdue reckoning over whether children should ever have been given access to these platforms at all. 

Last month, Australia introduced seminal new legislation banning social media for under-16s. The policy has thrown the issue to the fore and galvanised millions of parents and campaigners like me.

According to Ofcom research from 2024, almost a quarter of British children aged five to seven now own a smartphone. 

A third of those use social media unsupervised, and up to half watch livestreamed content on platforms such as TikTok.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer admitted last week: 'We need to better protect children. All options are on the table in relation to what further protections we can put in place.'

That was welcome, but underwhelming – warm words are no longer enough. Hundreds of thousands of parents are now urging MPs to go further – and to implement an outright ban on social media for under-16s.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch announced last week that she would suggest such a ban, saying use of social media apps 'correlates quite strongly' with mental health problems in under-16s. 

And just yesterday, more than 60 Labour MPs wrote to Sir Keir backing legislation to ban social media for children.

These platforms are designed for adults. Much of the content on them is manifestly unsuitable for children.

I believe we should be able to parent children in the digital world just as we do in the real one. We don't permit underage teens to go to nightclubs or betting shops. 

We set age limits on violent or X-rated films at the cinema – and youngsters are not allowed to buy alcohol, cigarettes or vapes.

Children are safeguarded in the real world, with clear rules and oversight: every music teacher, sports coach or youth worker requires a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.

And yet we hand our children a smartphone and remove almost all of those protections. There are no meaningful safety checks – just the Wild West of the internet.

Those backing a ban on social media for under-16s – and more than 200,000 have sent letters to their MPs about this in the past five days alone – are sometimes dismissed as fringe or extreme, largely thanks to the vocal lobbying of Big Tech for 'digital rights' and 'online freedom'. In truth, they are neither.

They are responding, sensibly, to what they see happening in their own homes and schools.

Some charities argue that a so-called 'blanket ban' would create a false sense of safety by pushing children towards darker and less regulated corners of the internet. That claim does not stand up to scrutiny.

The harms parents are worried about are not hidden on obscure websites. 

They already exist, at scale, on the biggest platforms – Facebook, Instagram, X and Snapchat – in video posts, direct messages, livestreams and recommendation feeds and algorithms designed to maximise engagement, not wellbeing.

Just think how social media actually works. These platforms are compelling because everyone else is on them. If a child's friends are not there, the incentive to join collapses. That is why clear, collective age limits matter: they reset the norm instead of leaving parents to battle peer pressure alone.

Of course, some teenagers will try to get around the rules. 

As the Daily Mail reported last week, teenagers in Australia are resorting to copying details from their parents' driving licences to open social media accounts, or screwing up their faces to give themselves 'wrinkles' to deceive the age-verification photo software.

It's inevitable that young people will look for ways to sidestep a ban. But that does not mean the ban is wrong in principle. If it did, we'd have no laws at all.

Other opponents claim this policy will create a 'cliff edge' where teens are suddenly subjected to the ugly world of social media the moment they turn 16. 

But this argument can be applied to any age-of-consent law.

In an interview at the weekend, Ian Russell – whose daughter Molly died by suicide aged 14, with an inquest finding that the self-harm content she had viewed online had contributed to her death – argued that existing online legislation is sufficient, and that a ban would be a 'sledgehammer approach'.

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Every parent recognises the terrible loss Ian has suffered, and the tireless work he has done to improve online safety. His voice deserves respect.

But on this issue, many parents disagree. Existing laws may look robust on paper, but they have not translated into meaningful protection in children's everyday lives. 

What we need are clear boundaries that reflect how powerful and pervasive these platforms have become.

Two years ago, I wrote an Instagram post about my concerns that children in my eight-year-old daughter's class already had smartphones, and how I wanted to delay getting one for her. It struck a nerve and went viral.

From that post, Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC) was born. 

Today, 173,000 parents have signed our Parent Pact – a collective agreement to delay getting your child a smartphone until they are at least 14. 

More than 400,000 parents are part of SFC communities, and groups now exist in 42 countries. It is an entirely apolitical, grassroots movement reflecting widespread concern about the impact of this untested technology on young minds.

Under an outdated rule from 1998, social media companies are not supposed to allow users under 13.

The result is plain to see. The average British 12-15-year-old now spends five and a half hours per day on their phone – almost the equivalent of a full-time job. 

Rates of anxiety, self-harm and depression are rising. Time spent with friends offline has collapsed.

The only people winning from all this are the tech companies.

Not children. Not parents.

Not families.

That has to change – and raising the age to 16 is the place to start.

Daisy Greenwell is director of Smartphone Free Childhood