Amendment 23

Part of Trade Bill - Report (3rd Day) – in the House of Lords at 4:30 pm on 6 January 2021.

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Photo of Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws Labour 4:30, 6 January 2021

My Lords, I too support this revised amendment. Like everyone else, I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who is a true reforming pioneer. Her ground-breaking work both domestically and internationally in seeking protective regulation for children really goes before her. She has been combating the hugely damaging impact of social media on children’s lives and has been at the forefront in creating a code of standards for child-sensitive design in technology and so on. Here is an area where, because of her persuasive skills, the UK really is leading the world. I hope that it will continue to do so and be at the vanguard of protecting children.

There is increasing recognition of the addictive nature of social media; probably most of us suffer from it in relation to our constant need to check our emails and our inability to function without our iPhones, so we know the nature of this particular development. For young people at an important stage in their psychological development, the harm can have very long-term effects and be especially damaging. I sit on the human rights advisory council for one of the big American tech companies, and not one of the people who lead those companies would let their children have the kind of access to the internet that so many of our young have. They put restrictions on their children having phones; they do not allow them usually until they are well into their teens; they put limits on their app use once they are 15 and 16, and they demand a handover of the phone in the evenings after supper so that they do not take it to bed and stay up all night linked in to other people.

You have to ask yourself why that is, and the answer is because they know the truth. They know that, in order to monetise their inventions, which feed the human desire for connection with others, they have had to have something to sell. You have to ask yourself: if your children are not paying for a product such as Facebook, Snapchat or Twitter, where is the profit? The answer, as we now know, is that the way it is monetised is that the children become the product. Shoshana Zuboff, the Harvard professor who has written a powerful book on surveillance capitalism, says that getting children addicted to phone usage is like trading in pork belly futures. They are being manipulated into being the ultimate consumer.

One of the designers that I have met spoke of his guilt about creating “likes” on these apps, because, of course, for advertisers pushing a commodity or for those promoting a particular political position, it is a vital indicator of interest and propensity. For the young, it feeds into, unfortunately, unmanageable emotions of uncertainty and feelings as to whether they really are likeable or attractive, and it can often lead to self-loathing. Recent research in the United States has shown that there is a frightening escalation of anxiety among the young—and it is certainty true here too—leading to self-harming, depressive illness, hospitalisations and suicide because of the kind of stuff that they find on the internet. It is not only among the older groupings of people in their teens; it goes right down to pre-teens of 10, 11 and 12.

I recently received a letter from a mother, Catherine Liddell, pleading for something to be done by Parliament because of the conflict this issue creates inside homes. Having a phone becomes a rite of passage for children when they go to secondary school, and sometimes they even have them at the end of their period in primary school—children of 10, 11 and 12. Children face ridicule if they do not have one. Platforms are designed to get them to spend as much time as possible on a company’s page, and it is made possible because each child is uniquely targeted by algorithms and supercomputers, which know and build up a profile of their every preference.

I know that the Government’s position is that they do not want the hands of its trade negotiators to be tied. Well, I am afraid that I do want them to be tied because, when it comes to the values that inform our trade negotiators, they really have to have some clarity when it comes to things as important as the well-being of our children. While we may feel slightly more optimistic today about the fact that a Democrat-led Administration in the United States will come to future negotiations for trade with perhaps a different set of values from those of the Trump Administration, we should not underestimate the real power and influence of the tech companies, as has been said by others. They are going to put the press on the Democrats as much as Republicans. We have to recognise that our trade negotiators will really be put under the cosh by the big internet companies. That is why this amendment is so important. Some things have to take precedence over commercial interests.

I urge the Government to support the amendment and display their commitment to leading the world on this important issue of online harms to our children.