MURDERED teen Brianna Ghey’s mum Esther blames social media for exposing her daughter to danger.
Brianna was 16 when killed in a “frenzied” knife attack by Sarah Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, last February.
The killer, then 15, had accessed violent content online.
Esther says tech companies now have a moral duty to block harmful content and is calling for a total ban on social media access for under-16s.
Actress Sophie Winkleman, who has two daughter aged under-10 with her husband Lord Fredrick Windsor, backs Esther and here tells why the Government must ban smartphones for under-16s.
It’s not only Brianna’s murder and the death of Mia Janin, who took her own life at 14 after being bullied online, which point to the absurdity of kids’ unlimited access to the darkest sewers of the web.
It’s all the quieter, unreported, everyday tragedies too.
We’ve all seen it — the bouncing, beaming boys and girls full of light and laughter, transformed into haunted, hollow shells mere days after being given a smartphone.
I don’t believe there are any upsides to smartphones and social media for children.
Talking with countless teens around the country in my role with School-Home Support, most of them don’t see the perks either.
They just do it because everyone else does.
Fair enough, they want to fit in.
But deep down, they know they are addicted, imprisoned and unhappy.
They also know that they don’t need to be endlessly “connected” after seeing and annoying each other at school all day.
The notion that these ruinous rectangles “connect” us is a gross fallacy.
Kids have never been more lonely, frantically scrolling away alone in their rooms, often till well past midnight.
They then stumble into school, knackered, anxious, angry and depressed — and relying on sugar to stay awake.
The focus-shredding platforms they communicate on — Snapchat and TikTok to name but two — are designed to be addictive.
It’s a brilliant business model — the more a child gazes at their phone, the more cash is raked in by tech giants.
Aside from the often disgusting, damaging and pointless content on offer, the rapid-fire nature of the material presented rewires a child’s brain to become incapable of concentrating on anything for more than a few seconds.
Teachers across the country verify that trying to hold a classroom’s attention is nigh-on impossible now.
This has huge ramifications for our childrens’ futures.
A young person unable to concentrate or think deeply has no chance of doing well and getting a good job.
Which is just fine if we are going to surrender all our skills and prospects to AI — all part of the plan for Big Tech.
But if we want human creativity and innovation to survive, we’d best let our kids’ brains blossom, not permanently malfunction by the age of 12.
Digital learning is another major problem.
Studies have shown that screens are inferior to paper and pen.
Clued-up countries like Sweden are chucking laptops out of the classroom and returning to books, while in the US Big Tech employees send their kids to low-tech schools such as the Waldorf School of the Peninsula in California.
Sadly, we in the UK still think screen-learning is shiny and progressive. It is not.
More than £100million has been forked out by the Government in the past two years on the soaring mental health needs of school pupils.
More than a million British children per year are referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
Many of them present with severe depression, anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders and suicidal behaviour.
Half a million of them are still on waiting lists.
If teenagers used brick phones capable only of of calling and texting — instead of the current portals to cyber-bullying, grooming, self-harm chat rooms, pro-anorexia forums and terrifyingly violent porn — the Government could save itself millions.
Without a smartphone, the vast majority of young people would be calmer, happier, healthier, better-rested and more able to focus at school.
Some communities are taking a stand.
The French village of Seine-Port outlawed smartphones in public places, while in the Irish town of Greystones no primary school child has a smartphone.
At Gordonstoun, King Charles’ former boarding school, phones are banned during the school day.
These places are seeing remarkable upturns in well-being – kids are talking to each other, laughing, sleeping well and doing better academically.
Concerned parents around England are also starting impressive anti-smartphone movements, including Parents United for a Smartphone-Free Childhood, UsForThem, TechedOff and Stick to Bricks.
But they need political support.
The only party to take proper interest in this is the Social Democratic Party.
Its leader, William Clouston, has advocated a ban on smartphones and social media for under-16s.
He says: “The evidence of harm is simply too great for us to ignore.”
What are Conservative and Labour doing?
This should be an urgent cross-party pledge to ban smartphones and social media for under-16s.
Disappointingly and, I believe, downright bizarrely, the NSPCC’s chief executive, Sir Peter Wanless, said it would be a “backwards step” to deny children online access via smartphones.
Surely a child’s right to be safe and protected trumps their right to access harmful rubbish online?
I am suffering the same painful dilemma as millions of other worried parents.
Do I give my daughter a smartphone which will hurt her brain or do I withhold a smartphone which will hurt her socially?
This is why a blanket ban where no one misses out is essential.
I say, save the children.
