𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Kemi Badenoch warned “no child is safe” as she urged the Government to save young people’s lives and ban under-16s from social media. Sitting alongside bereaved parents, she warned Britain is in the early days of “counter-revolution” against online dangers, and called on the Government to “protect childhood”.

Mrs Badenoch said social media is leading children to fall victim to cyberbullying, blackmail, dangerous challenges and even murder. She said: “This could happen to any child.” Mrs Badenoch had a stern warning for parents who think ‘Oh, this isn’t going to happen to my child, my child is fine’. The Conservative leader said: “No child is safe. We don’t know who will be harmed by this.”

Lisa Kenevan, whose son, Isaac, 13, died in 2022 after it was believed he took part in an online “challenge”, said: ”[We] try to create awareness for parents because it’s not wayward children, it’s not unloved children; it is anybody’s children this can happen to.”

Ellen Roome, who believes her son, Jools Sweeney, died at the age of 14 after also taking part in an online challenge in 2022, sat alongside fellow campaigners with Families for Social Media Safety and delivered a call for action.

She said: “Children are dying every day, and all of us here so strongly back a social media ban. We want children off the platforms. We can’t delay any longer… We can’t make a difference for our children, but we can for other children, and we so absolutely support a ban.”

Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott said: “Any parent watching this today needs to be afraid for what their child is looking at on a phone.”

Mrs Badenoch called for a new approach to protecting young people, restating her opposition to allowing children to take part in a trial of “puberty blocking” medical treatment.

She said: “I think there has been too much of a libertarian view of just letting everybody do what they want to do, live and let live. We need to protect childhood.

“Whether it’s on social media, whether it’s puberty blockers trials, allowing children to make decisions that are harmful to them because we’re too scared of looking tough or too scared of being firm is a dereliction of duty. We do have a duty of care, and it’s about time that politicians actually start talking about that, talking about family again, rather than pretending that it’s not anybody’s business.”

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Mrs Badenoch, a mother of three, described her family’s experiences with social media, saying: “I also had in my own extended family the loss of a young person, 27, due to social media and I know that this problem is global; it is widespread, and it is about time that in the UK we do something about it.”

The Conservative leader said she had removed YouTube from her family’s television because her “children just kept watching all sorts of junk”. She also said she had banned her nine-year-old son from Roblox, a so-called virtual universe.

“Right now he has been banned from Roblox and he did not thank me for it,” she said.