Wes Streeting has asked Jonathan Haidt, a bestselling author and high-profile advocate of banning social media for under-16s, to speak to his officials in his push for the UK to consider following a landmark ban in Australia.
The health secretary has invited Haidt to address an event with staff, charities and MPs after the prime minister, Keir Starmer, said he was open to stricter limits for young people.
Haidt came to prominence after writing Anxious Generation, in which he argued that widespread use of smartphones had caused a mental health crisis for young people.
He has become a global activist for stricter rules, including bans on social media for under-16s and on smartphones in schools.
Starmer said on Monday he would consider all options in curbing young people’s access to social media. “We are looking at Australia, there are different ways you can enforce it,” he told a meeting of Labour MPs.
The prime minister also addressed the use of phones in school, adding: “No one thinks you should have phones in schools.”
Those comments reflected a change of heart from Starmer, who previously said a social media ban would be difficult to police and could push teenagers toward the dark web.
Fleur Anderson, a Labour MP who has been campaigning for stricter curbs, said: “I was really pleased to hear that the prime minister is looking seriously at the Australian model. It is time we regulated this and gave young people the protections they need.”
Starmer’s words reflect a growing Westminster consensus in favour of such a move – one which has been provoked in part by the row over X’s AI tool allowing users to generate sexualised images of women and children.
On Tuesday, Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats became the latest party leader to leave the door open to a social media ban for young people after a similar move by Nigel Farage of Reform UK.
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, announced on Sunday she would enact a ban if elected prime minister, and would push for one from opposition. Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has also said he would support such a move.
Government ministers are split between those who are enthusiastic supporters of curbs on social media and those who have concerns about how they would be implemented and what the impact would be on teenagers.
Streeting has been one of those most in favour of taking stronger action, telling the BBC last week: “Sometimes I feel like my concentration span suffers because of doom scrolling and the way in which information is served up in increasingly short, bite-size chunks. And I worry about what that means for the development and the cognitive development of a generation of children and young people.”
As well as the event with Haidt, Streeting has asked officials to look into the details of Australia’s ban, which came into force at the start of the year.
The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, is also understood to be looking at the Australian policy, though she has not commissioned a team to actively examine it.
Allies say she is listening to warnings from charities such as the NSPCC that an outright ban could drive young people toward the dark web and undermine attempts to teach them how to use social media responsibly.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, and Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, share similar concerns, according to government insiders.
Nandy commissioned a survey of 14,000 young people that found most did not want an outright ban. She told the Guardian last year: “The challenge with banning social media is enforcement. Are we really saying as a country that we’re going to start prosecuting under-18s for using social media?”
Senior government sources say they are concerned about the possibility that Labour peers will back a Conservative-led attempt to amend the children’s wellbeing and schools bill to include a ban for under-16s.
The amendment, proposed by the former minister John Nash, has been signed by the Labour peer Luciana Berger and the Liberal Democrat Floella Benjamin.
Government officials believe that enough Labour peers could vote for or abstain on that amendment to see it pass when it is debated next week. The issue would then come to the Commons, where several Labour MPs could join the Tories in supporting it.
