Online Safety Roundtable: Hearing from the Generation Shaped by Social Media
- 13 hours ago
- 2 min read
I joined students at Sir Thomas Boughey Academy to discuss the future of social media, as the government prepares to act on its landmark national consultation
During the government's recent social media consultation, parents, teachers and students from across Newcastle-under-Lyme wrote to me with their views, and I was keen to continue that conversation in person.
On Friday, I visited Sir Thomas Boughey Academy to do exactly that, holding a roundtable discussion with students to hear first-hand from the young people this issue affects most.
The Growing Up in the Online World consultation, run by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, closed on 26 May having received over 116,000 responses from parents, young people and teachers across the country. It looked at a range of potential measures, including a possible ban on social media for under-16s, stronger age verification, restrictions on addictive design features like infinite scrolling and streaks, and phone curfews.
The government will publish its findings this summer, and under the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, which passed into law in April, it is now required to impose some form of age or functionality restrictions for children under 16.
Students shared a breadth of perspectives with me, with general agreement that there is a real problem to be tackled, even where opinions differed on how best to address it. This is ultimately a debate that will be shaped by the very generation who have grown up with social media.
Governments and legislators need to keep pace with a constantly changing online world, and that can only be done by listening to the people living it. Young people have a strong role to play in that, and I will be taking the voices of students from Newcastle-under-Lyme with me in debates in Parliament and conversations with Ministers as the government decides how to act.
Photos by Jake Wall
