Fourth Report - Screen time: impacts on education and wellbeing

We are extremely concerned at the level of harmful content children and young people can be exposed to online, and how it can affect their mental health, physical health and educational outcomes. This is exacerbated for certain vulnerable groups who are more likely to be negatively affected and exposed to child criminal exploitation online. The extent of exposure to online harms by young girls and women is also deeply concerning and is contributing to growing mental health challenges and eating disorders.

The overwhelming weight of evidence submitted to us suggests that the harms of screen time and social media use significantly outweigh the benefits for young children, whereas limited use of screens and genuinely educational uses of digital technology can have benefits for older children. For this reason, screen time should be minimal for younger children and better balanced with face-to-face socialisation and physical activity for older ones.

For children and adolescents alike the rapid rise of the use of screens and devices has come at a substantial cost and Government needs to do more across departments to protect them from addiction, online harms and the mental health impacts of extensive use of devices. (Paragraph 27) Guidance on mobile phones in schools

We strongly welcome the Government’s decision to implement a tougher mobile phone ban in schools in England. We welcome the fact that this includes break times and sends a clearer message than previous guidance about the benefits of having phones out of sight and reach. It is clear that a ban can have a positive impact of the mental health and educational outcomes of children.

Initially introducing the ban on a non-statutory basis is the right approach, but the success of the ban will depend on its implementation and how widely it is taken up. We do not agree with the Government’s approach of informally monitoring the mobile phone ban. Without a formal monitoring mechanism, the implementation and effects of the ban cannot be measured and it will be impossible to judge whether a statutory ban is necessary.

The next Government should implement a formal monitoring mechanism to measure both the implementation and effects of the mobile phone ban. The results of this monitoring phase should be published and shared with schools. If results show that a non-statutory ban has been ineffective, the next Government must move swiftly to introduce a statutory ban.

We welcome the flexibility within the mobile phone ban guidance which allows schools to choose a process for implementation most suitable for them and the inclusion of exemptions for children with particular needs. (Paragraph 44) 48 Screen time: impacts on education and wellbeing

Government guidance must also set out the approximate cost of certain approaches, such as secure storage. The next Government must also ensure parents are not prevented from being able to contact their children during their commute to school. The guidance should be changed as soon as possible to prevent schools from insisting mobile phones are left at home. (Paragraph 45) Support for parents

Parents are unsure of what their children are doing online, lack confidence in being able to manage screen time, and want guidance to support them. The Government is wrong to conflate arguments about setting an exact time limit on screen time with the fact that some guidance and information would be useful for parents.

The next Government should work across departments including DHSC, DSIT, Education and the Home Office to produce guidance for parents on how to best manage and understand the impact of screen time on their children. A common sense approach would be to focus on aspects of screen time that are known to cause harm. For example, guidance should advise that children should not be able to access screens after they have gone to bed and should incorporate physical activity into their day to help balance time spent on screen. Guidance should also focus on the ways in which parents can monitor use of devices, the uses of parental controls and how to deal with problematic screen use, including when to seek help.

Advice to parents of babies and young children should be revised to ensure it gives sufficient attention to face to face interaction and warns of the risks of screen time in reducing opportunities for this. Adults should be encouraged to minimise use of devices where possible when supervising young children at a formative age and the Department for Education should commission advice for parents through family hubs and children’s centres on the healthy use of devices.

There are over half a million apps claiming to be educational within leading app stores such as the Apple App Store and Google Play, but no quality standards for educational content or design features that apps must align with to be included in the educational category. As a consequence, parents have little to no confidence in being able to correctly identify high quality versus low quality educational resources online. Many schools encourage the use of educational apps to support learning and engage pupils with subjects such as mathematics, but there is currently a poor evidence base regarding which are most effective.

The next Government must commission guidance for parents and schools on the educational value of purported educational websites and apps within a year. They should also support a kitemarking scheme for educational resources found online in the first year of the new Parliament to enable parents to quickly identify the best educational resources online for their children. The next Government should engage with tech companies to encourage them to introduce standards for the use of educational labels and to remove apps which do not offer educational benefit. (Paragraph 62) Screen time: impacts on education and wellbeing 49 Digital literacy curriculum

We welcome the inclusion of digital literacy in the curriculum. However, the curriculum is not structured well enough to keep children safe online. Digital literacy is split across numerous subjects with different focuses and teachers. Teachers must grapple with a topic that is constantly evolving and comprehend numerous guidance documents provided by the Government while often having no specialist knowledge of the topic themselves. As a result, the digital literacy capabilities of children in the UK remain generally poor.

The next Government must provide additional training and support for teachers delivering the personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) curriculum, particularly digital literacy. The next Government should embed additional core content on online safety into the information and communication technology (ICT) training and early career framework for all teachers.

The next Government should consolidate non-statutory guidance on digital safety and curriculum content to provide a clear guide for teachers which should be complementary to Keeping Children Safe in School. Once this consolidation is complete the Department should invest in subject knowledge enhancement courses to ensure it reaches the wide variety of teachers who could benefit from it.

We welcome inspections of PSHE as part of a routine Ofsted inspection. However, a subject as broad as PSHE, which covers so many different topics including digital literacy, cannot be adequately evaluated solely within the current personal development metric.

Ofsted must change the way in which PSHE is evaluated during inspection. Instead of being assessed through Ofsted’s personal development metric, PSHE should be assessed through thematic reviews in the same way as other core curriculum subjects. (Paragraph 83) Online Safety Act 2023

The Online Safety Act 2023 will undoubtably play a role in keeping children safe from online harms. However, we are concerned that children will not feel the full protections of the Act until implementation is completed in 2026.

The next Government must work with Ofcom to ensure that there are no delays to implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023 and set out how it is working with Ofcom to ensure children are protected during the transition period. Robust age verification should be implemented immediately on internet platforms and it is unacceptable that they continue to be widely ignored.

Although we welcome attempts by Ofcom to make platforms safer for children who use them, it is clear that the entire system surrounding the digital age of consent and how it is verified is not fit for purpose. Until there are robust age verification measures used on social media platforms, the digital age of consent will have little to no impact on protecting the data of underage users. Now is also the time for a broader debate on the adequacy of the digital age of consent. The age of consent in the UK is 16, a child cannot drive until they are 17 and cannot vote in England 50 Screen time: impacts on education and wellbeing until they are 18. We have heard no evidence to suggest that 13 is an appropriate age for children to understand the implications of allowing platforms access to their personal data online. Yet we know even with the digital age of consent currently formally set at the lowest possible level, it is widely ignored and not effectively enforced. This must change urgently.

The next Government must launch a consultation by the end of the year on whether 13 is a reasonable age of digital consent, or whether it should be raised. The next Government should recommend 16 as a more appropriate age. This approach should be cross-government and include research on the reasoning behind other countries having higher digital age of consents than our own.

Decisions made by the Government on the level of the digital age of consent must be effectively enforced. Ofcom must need to be able to go further than simply naming and shaming those who breach age verification measures. The Online Safety Act 2023 allows for substantial fines or even imprisonment for executives of companies who breach its rules, and the Government should consider how this approach can be applied to social media companies who knowingly breach age verification requirements and expose children to addictive content which is not appropriate for them.

It is clear that children are exposed to online harms when using smart phones to access the internet and, in particular, social media platforms. We support calls for tighter controls on the sale of smart phones to children under 16 years old in order to protect them from harm.

The next Government should work alongside Ofcom to consult on additional measures regarding smartphones for children under 16 years old within the first year of the new Parliament. Measures to consider should include the total ban of smartphones (internet-enabled phones) for children under 16, parental controls installed as default on phones for under 16s, additional guidance for parents at point of sale and controls at App Store level to prevent children from accessing or utilising age inappropriate content as well as controls at system level to prevent children uploading nude images.

The next Government should work with mobile phone companies and network operators to promote children’s phones, a class of phone which can be used for contact and GPS location but not access to the internet or downloading apps.

There has been a huge increase in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in recent years by children. This leaves users at risk of encountering new types of online harms facilitated by the use of AI. Despite this, there is currently little to no regulation of the AI market.

The next Government must draw up legislation in the first year of the new Parliament on regulating AI or risk the technology developing faster than legislation can be drawn up to control it, ultimately causing additional harm to children. AI operators should also be held accountable for their use of children’s data and it is essential that children’s data is protected where they are below the digital age of consent. (Paragraph 120) Screen time: impacts on education and wellbeing 51 Online Safety Act 2023

The UK’s edtech sector is the largest in Europe, and more schools in England are using edtech and AI than ever before. Although edtech has some benefits, we are concerned about the implications of edtech and AI on children’s data and privacy. The Online Safety Act 2023 is exempted in school settings, AI is not regulated, and digital technology can harvest huge amounts of data from its users.

The next Government should produce a risk assessment on the use of edtech and AI in schools as soon as possible, and particularly on the extent to which it poses a risk to the security of children’s data. The safety and reliability of edtech should also be assessed by Ofcom both it is introduced to schools, and periodically after it is brought into schools.

Since the pandemic, the Government has provided over 1.35 million laptops and tablets to schools, trusts, local authorities and further education providers for disadvantaged children and young people. Edtech has more malware than all other sectors combined, and therefore it is essential that these devices receive software updates and renewals regularly in order to keep them secure for longer and reduce our rate of e-waste.

Digital devices provided to schools by the Government must be maintained and kept secure through regular renewals and software updates. The Department for Education must set out a funding and renewal strategy for device management alongside a strategy for disposing of digital hardware that is no longer fit for purpose within the first year of the new Parliament. (Paragraph 136) 52 Screen time: impacts on education and wellbeing