UK's Social Media Obsession – Is it Affecting Our Kids’ Mental Health ?

 

The large increase in mental health referrals in the UK's younger age groups since the end of the pandemic has finally got the UK government worried…so it should, and not before time.

Why ?

Apart from the more obvious consequneces of excessive screen use, which we'll conider shortly, we have at least 1 million young people in UK classified as ‘NEETs’ (i.e. Not in Education, Employment or Training); this is a shocking indictment for any 1st world society, particularly one that prides itself on its sense of 'fair play', and is still the 6th richest in the world, despite recent economic mismanagement by successive governments. 

A significant proportion of these NEETs are likely to be in this category because of mental health issues. More and more of our youngsters, including even some under 5s, are also being diagnosed with some form of mental health issue, and not all of this is likely to be due to the 'over-diagnosis' and 'spectrum building' phenomenon that has been hitting the headlines recently. There is an increasing tendency to blame excessive social media use for this problem; it is not only a drain on the treasury via the benefits bill, but represents lost work potential, which can't be helping our woeful national productivity figures. Perhaps more importantly, it damages the prospects, and the morale, of the young people themselves. Having finally cottoned on to this, and the risk it poses to their re-election prospects, back-benchers are demanding action from their ministers.

There is also considerable, and more general, concern about the excessive 'screen time' very young children are being allowed to rack up in some families, and whether this is affecting their assimilation of social skills in their vital formative years.

The whole issue is now in 'ministerial focus' as being ripe for some form of government action.

The latest proposed solution for the older NEETs group is to offer them all guaranteed work as an alternative to benefits; this does come with a price in terms of personal freedom, however, with strict sanctions in the form of benefit withdrawal for any who won’t comply. But will this tougher approach actually work for them long-term, or will we just end up with thousands more rough sleepers with not a penny to their name. More to the point, we should try to find out whether social media really are to blame for all the mental trauma these youngsters appear to be going through. But will restricting access actually help solve the problem, or could it make things worse by isolating them further ?

The problem is that, as always, when faced with an issue such as this one, this particular government team tends to go for a quick fix that will please their all-powerful back-benchers, using what it sees as the most expedient remedy at the time. This tends to take precedence over a slower, and arguably more considered approach, which is more likely to produce a lasting solution, and involves first identifying, and then addressing, the root cause(s) of the problem. 

Thus, in this case, their knee-jerk solution of effectively ‘forcing’ unemployed youngsters into specially created jobs, (which the employers have to be paid to offer them in the first place, and may regard as free labour)), may not solve the problem….it may even compound it if the jobs prove a poor match to the individuals' capabilities and alienate them against the world of work. Restricting media access may also be problematical.

One quite draconian potential 'weapon' the authorities have to fight excessive screen time is to ban use of the platforms selectively within UK. So far UK.Gov haven't as yet decided apply restrictions to social media use in an attempt to achieve results, although they, like many other national governments, will be watching the Australian experience carefully. Recent reports suggest they may be teetering on the edge of a decision. 

An outright ban could have unpredictable consequences, and leave the goverment vulnerable to yet more accusations of 'nanny-stateism'. One possible, but less well-rehearsed, additional consequence of an outright ban pertains to Labour's much vaunted plans to give the vote to 16-17 year olds. If they also ban under 16s from social media entirely, and then extend the franchise, they risk the wrath of today's 14-15 year-olds (i.e tomorrow's new voter group at the 2029 ballot box). It will be fascinating to see whether they fall into their own trap....that one would certainly qualify for the 'lammy of the year award'....and would certainly not benefit their prospects in the May elections...and beyond.

What should we really be doing about it ?: Identifying the Root Causes

What we as a society need to do before ever attempting to impose a ‘solution’ such as this is to take a hard look at changes in our lifestyles, and more particularly those of our offspring, over the past 10 years or so. Experience tells us that imposing restrictions, or indeed outright prohibition, is rarely the best method of achieving results, as it almost always fails to achieve 'buy-in' from the target population, particularly if it's done without consultation. We thus need to be sure we are addressing the root cause and not something coincidental.

A look at recent changes in lifestyle should give us clues as to why our youngsters seem so generally beset with problems this early in their lives. What quickly becomes obvious is, like many other issues we have to deal with in our society, the causes are multifactorial, and the solution (if indeed there is one!) is likely to require a number of changes to the way we do things, and not just a single 'silver bullet'. As already suggested, one of the factors already implicated in the mental health 'epidemic' is excessive social media use via smartphones. Is this the principal cause, or are there other factors at work ?

It has to be said up front that growing up never has been a trouble-free process. Even the normal experience of finding out how the world works, that we all go though as infants, toddlers, pre-teens and then ultimately as teenagers and young adults, will always involve some unpleasant surprises; not the least of these is the shock of finding out that the world wasn’t created solely for our benefit. 

A bit further down the line, the ‘pushing back of boundaries’ phase we go through as teenagers is bound to generate friction with both our parents and the establishment, and certainly did in my day at a time when when there were no social media...or even computers!. Thus there is plenty of precedent for the general 'turbulence of youth' and the discomfort it causes for the child...and of course for its parents.

But nevertheless there does seem to be something out of the ordinary with the current level of malaise in our young, which can't be ascribed wholly to today's 'instant' media coverage.

One obvious root cause of this apparent recent anomaly might be the pandemic. For better or worse, we did effectively shut our society down for long periods of time during 2020-21. This was to protect us all against a nasty and ill-adapted coronavirus with a significant ‘kill rate’, against which we had no vaccine. One result was that our kids were essentially ‘banged-up’ at home without the opportunity to interact with their peers directly, or receive any normal communal schooling. Although this will have undoubtedly adversely affected the mental health of some, and is acknowledged to have set back the educational progress of many, it’s unlikely to be the whole story. Adolescent humans are adaptable creatures, and we’re now 4 years on from the last official lockdown in 2021, so we should also consider other and more recent potential causes to explain why the malaise is still ongoing.

It’s probably no coincidence that the pandemic coincided with a rapid rise in remote communication. I can well remember my first Zoom call to other members of my own family at Christmas 2020 as the only way of making visual contact during the 'visiting season'. The early 2020s thereafter continued the revolution in the way we communicate, and this was particularly evident in the younger generations, many of whom became wedded (or is it welded?!) to their phone or tablet screens for much of their waking lives as a result. 

The Silicon Valley 'big-tech'-controlled  social media (SM) platforms were quick to realise how addictive their offerings were, and flocked to service this enhanced demand, boosting their ad-driven profits nicely in the process.  Video clips, being easier and more attractive to assimilate quickly, rapidly took hold and predominated, and older text-driven platforms such as Musk’s Twitter (now X) and Meta’s Facebook soon faced strong competition from the more visual platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and the like, eventually displacing them from teenage smartphone screens. 

Does the potential for malign influence of social media and other types of  screen use extend to the very young, and could it be responsible for the problems outr teens are experiencing? 

The first part of the question is difficult to answer, in that few kids under 5 are likely to be accessing SM to the same extent as their older siblings, and the evidence that screen use is harmful in this age group is largely circumstantial at present. Neither can we really judge whether very early exposure leaves a legacy for later life, because excessive SM use is a relatively recent phenomenon, and today's older teenagers won't have had the opportunity to indulge to the same extent in their formative years. Thus the jury is still out, but we should at least be prepared to ration screen time in our under 5s, just in case it does turn out to stunt their social development as suggested. It's also vital that kids ths young should be encouraged to interact with their peers as part of their normal social development. The fact that screens are highly addictive in the very young needs no confirmation, as any parent trying to wrest a device from its 3- or 4-year old at bedtime will readily attest!

Consequences

If we look at some of the effects of this radical change in the way we communicate, we can identify several major differences in behaviour, particularly in the young:

·         Attention span has decreased – the design of our smartphones and apps encourages rapid switching between apps, and SM content favours short video clips, which are designed to compete for and capture our attention for long enough to display their accompanying ads.

·         We now tend to shun ‘traditional’ sources of entertainment such as radio and television, either streaming longer videos and films to our personal devices online, or avoiding live broadcasting alternatives altogether and just staying with our favourite SM apps on our digital devices. We also get most of our news from these platforms now, rather than the more traditional newspapers and broadcast media of old. This, in turn, introduces the potential element of 'fake news' which a certain US president is so fond of invoking in his defence.

·         We rarely talk to one another ‘in person’ – even within our own family structures, communication often being limited to a series of grunts, particularly in the mornings, with the average teenager retreating to its bedroom ‘hot foot’, if faced with any serious attempt by its parents or younger siblings to do more than this, or, (heaven forbid!), actually engage them in meaningful conversation.

·         The internet is essentially unregulated and uncensored, at least in the West.  Ideally, this is how it should be in any democratic society which places a high value on free speech. However, it does have two important consequences: a) content is rarely reviewed or verified before it is posted and b) there is little effective restriction on content which is potentially harmful to young minds. Far from improving things, the recent advent of AI has made it much easier to avoid taking any responsibility at all for validating whatever we're presented with - so much so that few of us actually bother. This is despite frequent admissions from AI's curators that their engines do make mistakes, and even sometimes 'invent' entirely fictitious content....

·         Smartphones and their apps are designed to be addictive. This makes self-restriction of their use difficult and many go on using their screens late into the night with the inevitable degradation in sleep quality and amount. It is well known that chronic lack of sleep compromises the immune system, thereby promoting ill-health; it also blunts intellectual ability. 

·        The distraction of attention caused by continuous smartphone accessibility is well understood by schools, such that many now ban their use in the classroom. Some schools even go so far as to confiscate all phones on arrival at school, or require pupils to store them in foil pouches, and only return them on departure. 

·       Last, but not least, is the issue of road safety. You cannot possibly be aware of what's going on around you while peering at a smartphone screen intently and listening to music at full volume through earbuds. The number of adults (of all ages!) visible nowadays obliviously jay-walking in this way in busy environments, while exposed to road traffic...and lunatic e-scooter or e-Bike riders on pavements is frightening. It's amazing there aren't more fatal accidents.

Thus we are in a situation where our youngsters (and I suspect more than a few adults!) are voluntarily 'chained' to their devices' screens for a large part of their waking lives by their screen addiction; this is usually with little or no supervision. They are thus exposed to a bewildering choice of material, a significant proportion of which may be harmful to their developing minds and personalities. They even risk 'death by inattention' on the roads. Should we therefore be prepared to apply restrictions on use, or even attempt to regulate and exclude some content ?

Another important factor which may be contributing is the mental health challenge our young people face in an increasingly uncertain world in which their prospects of finding a job, earning enough to buy a house, and starting a family, are merely unobtainable pipe-dreams for the majority. Although those of us growing up in the 1960s and 70s had similar worries in the form of a struggling economy, sky high tax rates and of course the prospect of nuclear annihilation within the next 4 minutes,  we did at least have some prospects of a decent job and eventually owning a house.

Small wonder then that some of them just can’t cope, and go ‘off the rails’. 

Why should we as a society be worried ?

As their parents and elders, we have a strong interest in preventing harm in our offspring. How then should we go about helping them avoid this dilemma ?

You may notice I’ve phrased this question deliberately, using ‘should’ rather than ‘could’. The reason is quite simple – even if we aren’t related to them, these young people will become tomorrow’s adults and it will be up to their generation, and then their own offspring, to ensure our species survives and prospers. We all therefore have a moral responsibility to ensure that we use our accumulated knowledge and resources to help them into this key role wherever possible. 

It goes without saying that any parent will (or should!) have a built-in urge to see their own progeny do well in life. But it is also incumbent on us all collectively to promote the interests of our younger generations, even if we are childless, or have older offspring who have long since ‘flown the nest’.  And the imperative isn't just a moral one - we all get old, after all, and when we do, we’ll rely on the younger generations to keep society going and support us in our dotage. This is particularly important for a population with a pronounced demographic 'bulge' of very old and infirm people, kept alive 'beyond their time' by our remarkable advances in medical technology. Thus, we can't just sit back and  'abandon our younger generations to their fate'....

Possible Remedies

Are there any obvious remedies for the current addiction to smartphones and social media use ?

One possibility, of course, is selective restrictions on usage based on age. Many governments are actively considering this now, and the Australians have just introduced the first outright ban on use of the main SM platforms for their under-16s.  As already alluded to, the rest of the concerned world will be watching its implementation with interest. 

The Chinese, of course, are already way ahead of us in the West, and have long imposed strict limits on internet use for their youngsters, with additional continued and extensive censorship of content for all age groups. This is a politically-motivated population control measure and is rigorously enforced by the CCP. It is only really possible in autocracies where freedom can be restricted effectively, and wouldn't work in our democracy; we should therefore not attempt to follow this model too closely for our SM use, but might benefit from a look at the ‘best bits’ it has to offer.

While we should also congratulate our Australian friends on their bravery in being the first to introduce a contentious, and potentially vote-losing rule such as this, we should expect its effect to be limited, although hopefully it won't prove to be a total failure.  Teenagers as a ‘species’ are resourceful, and for the most part highly tech competent, beasts, and are adept at finding ways round restrictions imposed on them by adults. They will no doubt do so again here.

As we saw with recent attempts by authorities the world over to restrict access to the e-book shadow-libraries and then more recently the porn sites, the simple expedient of a VPN was all that was required to circumvent the obligation for DNS restrictions imposed by individual territories on their local ISPs in a failed attempt at control. Age-dependent access restriction, such as that imposed in Australia, requires different technology, usually including AI-driven photographic or other biometric confirmation. Numerous ‘dodges’ designed to circumvent this are already appearing in Oz, one notably simple and ingenious one already in circulation being to hold up a lifesize photo of one’s mother in front of the camera (this one will only work if you’re female, I suspect!).

Thus we will need to find more subtle ways of persuading our young to switch off their smartphones and ‘go out to play’, as my generation always had to when we were growing up. It’s only by doing this that we’ll get them to actually apply their own ingenuity to solving the problem of growing up with their peers - and get enough exercise to avoid ill-health and an early death. They, after all, will be the main beneficiaries in the long run, so we may just need to give them the appropriate ‘nudge’. Like cracking some other teenage addictions, though, it may not be that easy….

Although our society has changed a lot since its post-WW2 ‘renaissance’, and it was generally a much simpler world back then, I think there is much we can learn from a look back at that era, and perhaps also at the way more 'primitive' societies without ready access to modern technology still manage today. 

As kids, we were much more pro-active about finding our entertainment – we simply had to be. There were no electronic 'gizmos' to keep us amused, and very restricted access to broadcast media, so we had to be much more inventive about things. This, of necessity, required ‘offline’ interaction with friends (there was no 'online' until the late 1980s in any case), and the means to physically get from our homes to wherever we met (usually on foot or by bike). We were thus forced to explore the physical world, and burn calories in the process, thus avoiding the risk of the childhood obesity which seems to be so prevalent nowadays. We also had to learn how to interact with our peers, and with any adults we met (and often irritated the hell out of!) along the way. All part of growing up, you might say, and you’d be right, but sadly something few of today’s kids get full access to in their early years.

Now I’m not advocating a return to the 1950s here…..the world and humanity have become to complex and numerous to allow that, and we do of course have to ensure our kids are safe when we send them out into an increasingly hostile and overcrowded world. But we should be encouraging them to literally ‘get out more’ and providing the means and the incentive to do so. Easier said than done, I know, given how expensive everything has become (even a single bus ride to the nearest town will set you back £3, and that’s only as long as the current government subsidy is maintained).

Given the cost of a new iPhone 17 (possibly already out of date by the time you read this!), or indeed its latest Android equivalent, is now well into 4 figures GBP, surely some of those hundreds if not thousands of pounds we regularly spend on technology upgrades for our kids could be diverted to funding other, and healthier, things for them to do?

What could be done to divert their attention from their screens? Ultimately we have to persuade them that they want to do other things with their time, otherwise the project will fail.

One option might be to provide other, more attractive non-electronic ways in which they could communicate.

The urge to interact with one’s peers is very strong during the early years, and of course receives an additional boost once the pubertal 'hormone storm' starts to kick in. We saw first hand the effect of being prevented from doing so during the pandemic lockdowns. 

Harnessing that urge may well be the secret of any success, since we are, after all, a social species. Although it does require more effort to visit someone physically rather than just text or SM-message them, eventually you will want to meet them face to face. Shyness also plays a part in deterring initial physical meetings, and the anonymity of the internet was probably the biggest draw away from face to face meeting in the early years of social media. It has also allowed more sinister interactions, as we've seen from the numerous grooming scandals we've seen in recent years. Arguably this 'easy anonymity' may well have been one of the root causes of the present malaise in restricting true social contact with one's peers.

Providing financial incentives to wean individuals off their phones might be one way of promoting this – introducing subsidies to attend some form of communal recreational activity, e.g. a leisure centre, or youth club, including waiving expensive Local Authority entry charges, might be a start. Better provision of dedicated youth clubs and other teenage facilities would be needed to enable this. It’s probably no coincidence that a new UK.Gov initiative has just been announced to this end. We’ll see whether it actually leads anywhere, given current budget constraints….

Another possibility is to co-opt the very people who present much of the content our teens seem to thrive on - our SM influencers. These folks, many of whom make a good living out of their highly persuasive online efforts, wield considerable power over their young audiences and can 'sell' them products and lifestyle changes that authorities and retailers can't. Why could we not enlist their help to minimise the harm their own medium is causing by encouraging more restraint on smartphone use, and recommending alternatives ? This is much more likely to achieve results than an outright ban, particularly if the material is pitched in the right way to appeal to their target age-group. There is ample verifiable evidence that excessive screen use does affect health outcomes, and it should not be difficult to parcel up this key message appropriately, while not giving it the appearance of a traditional 'government health warning'.....

Ultimately though, persuasion must also come from home if it is to be successful.

I’d be the first to admit that parents have a tough time of it at present, just trying to keep food on the table and a roof over their kids’ heads. That said, they, and they alone have the ultimate responsibility for their pre-adult offspring, and neither the state nor schools can, or should, substitute for them in this vital role. 

Many young parents faced with the arrival of their first child have little clue as to exactly how to deal with the highly vocal and demanding 'bundle of fun' that nature has just presented them with. As a society we must support them in their steep learning curve, and its in out interest to do so. Those with willing parents and grandparents living nearby and on hand are in the best position – they have the wisdom of their elders to call upon directly – and access to free baby-sitting services if they’re really lucky! Not all young parents have this luxury however, and those that don’t have to rely on external help and their own ingenuity. Local Authority Family Centres can and do help a lot during the early years, with all kinds of educational courses and advice for young parents as well as their kids. 

We need to keep these important amenities going and not allow the current government's tendency towards continued austerity, and particularly the proposed potentially damaging local government reorganisation, to starve LA funding. If this happens, an emasculated LA sector risks falling back into the austerity trap of the last 10 years and could be forced to farm out  yet more important social services to volunteers wholesale (e.g. libraries), or even close them down them altogether.

When it comes to older ‘kids’, the key to avoid them falling into permanent worklessness is to provide them with gainful employment as soon as they have finished their chosen training pathway and are of an age when they are ready for the world of work. Making a career choice in one's late teens has always been difficult, increasingly so now that Blair's doctrine of a 'university education for everyone' has been effectively discredited, and both the personal cost of a university degree and the accompanying £50k+ of student debt it brings has gone stratospheric. The temptation for a school-leaver is thus to take a temporary job, or just stay on the dole. Allowing them to sit on benefits, as governments of all political hues have done recently for the sake of expediency, really isn’t an option any longer. 

It’s expensive for one thing, and adds significantly to the benefits bill. But the worst aspect of it is the feeling of frustration and worthlessness it instils in the young person themselves. The longer someone spends out of a job, or even never having had one, the more difficult it becomes for them to fit into the world of work, and employers recognise this when selecting candidates. The simple habit of getting up to a deadline and following a daily routine reliably can prove extremely difficult if you’ve been out of work for a number of years, let alone mastering the intricacies of procedures involved in some modern jobs.

Sadly, the present government has gone badly wrong with the last two budgets, in providing strong disincentives to employers from taking on new staff through the tax system. In its desperation to appear to favour 'the workers', and satisfy excessive public sector wage demands at any cost, it has hit industry hard by raising the minimum wage, employers NI contributions and imposing draconian new employment legislation favouring the employee. Its 'expert advisers' no doubt convinced it that this was essential to demonstrate economic probity to the Markets, while satisfying its more left-leaning back-benchers on employment reform. But by depressing industry and the private sector generally in favour of bolstering the public sector, it has already set back our productivity and our wealth creation prospects by several years in the process, with worse to come.

Hopefully these unfortunate measures will be reversed eventually, although we may have to wait another 3 years for this hapless government and its doctrines to be eradicated, before it is to allowed to happen. 

Whether the new scheme aimed at ‘rehabilitating’ our NEETS will compensate for the loss of available jobs since October 2024 in the meantime, remains to be seen. I somehow doubt it...

Final Thoughts

Although smartphone use and social media are probably not the whole cause of our youngsters' mental health issues, as an established addiction, it is probably a major contributor. There is clearly no ‘magic bullet’ that will suddenly cause our youngsters to get off their screens and "on their bikes", as the saying goes. As always, social change of this magnitude to address a harmful and highly addictive habit will need patient and sustained application of the right kind. The old adage “You can take horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”, when applied to teenagers should probably read “You might eventually persuade them to drink the water if they are thirsty enough, but you’ve got to get them to the water hole first”.

The fact that some teenagers are already showing concern about 'brain rot' is perhaps a hopeful sign that this feat might actually be achievable...

Joking apart, we really do need to achieve change, and soon, before our youngsters' health (and eyesight/hearing !) is damaged any further - to say nothing of their prospects.

Definitely a good New Year's resolution to consider for 2026.....

Fits Published 10.12.25; Revised 24.1.26