The Faculty of Public Health (FPH) has published a new report, Growing up in an online world which sets out the actions necessary to better protect the health and wellbeing of children and young people as they navigate a commercially-driven and potentially harmful online world.
This new report, published following UK Government announcements that social media platforms will be blocked from offering services to under-16s, is drawn from the Faculty’s formal response to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) national consultation 'Growing Up in the Online World', and considers the growing evidence base that online platform design and content is negatively impacting the health of children and young people and becoming an increasingly severe public health issue.
The report highlights that many online platforms including social media networks are driven by commercial interests, and that conflicts between profits and safeguarding are often leading to insufficient safeguarding for children and young people.
FPH President Professor Tracy Daszkiewicz said:
“The harms associated with children’s use of online platforms are becoming increasingly clear and must be recognised as a public health challenge in their own right. There is growing evidence that online environments are exposing children and young people to avoidable harms, including poorer mental health, sleep disruption, reduced physical activity, and increased exposure to health misinformation.
We are also seeing evidence linking social media use with a range of health-risk behaviours, including smoking and vaping, alcohol use, gambling and other behaviours that can have lifelong consequences for health and wellbeing.
These harms are not simply the result of individual choices. They are shaped by platform designs and commercial systems that are intended to maximise engagement and attention, often amplifying exposure to harmful content, unhealthy products and damaging social pressures. As with other commercial determinants of health, there can be tensions between commercial interests and the wellbeing of children and young people.
The Faculty of Public Health is therefore calling for a precautionary and population-level approach to online safety reflecting the fact that absence of evidence does not mean absence of harm. We need a cautious approach that places responsibility on platforms, regulators and policymakers to create healthier digital environments for children by design."
Among its recommendations, the report calls for:
- A legal minimum age of 16 for access to social media platforms in their current form.
- Raising the age of digital consent to 16, with stronger protections for services that use personal data for commercial profiling and targeted advertising.
- Restrictions on certain platform features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications and algorithmic recommendation systems for younger users.
- Stronger safeguards around high-risk functionalities including livestreaming, location sharing, disappearing content and interactions with strangers.
- Minimum age requirements and feature-level restrictions for consumer AI chatbots and AI companion services.
- Robust, privacy-preserving age assurance systems, backed by independent auditing and meaningful enforcement.
