Techbytes: UK government considers two-hour social media time limit, curfews for children

Social media limits for children in the United Kingdom are reportedly being planned by the government to tackle “compulsive” screen time, the technology secretary has told Sky News.

According to Sky News, Peter Kyle said he was concerned about “the overall amount of time kids spend on these apps” as well as the content they see.

A two-hour cap per platform is being seriously considered after meetings with current and former employees of tech companies.

A night-time or school-time curfew has also been discussed.

Children would be blocked from accessing apps such as TikTok or Snapchat once they have hit the limit, rather than just reminded of how long they have been scrolling, it is understood.

An announcement on screen time was expected this autumn.

Kyle said: “I’ll be making an announcement on these things in the near future. But I am looking very carefully about the overall time kids spend on these apps.

“I think some parents feel a bit disempowered about how to actually make their kids healthier online.

“I think some kids feel that sometimes there is so much compulsive behaviour with interaction with the apps they need some help just to take control of their online lives and those are things I’m looking at really carefully.

“We talk a lot about a healthy childhood offline. We need to do the same online. I think sleep is very important, to be able to focus on studying is very important.”

He added that he wanted to stop children spending hours viewing content which “isn’t criminal, but it’s unhealthy, the overuse of some of these apps”.

“I think we can incentivise the companies and we can set a slightly different threshold that will just tip the balance in favour of parents not always being the ones who are just ripping phones out of the kids’ hands and having a really awkward, difficult conversation around it,” he added.

Kyle spoke exclusively to Sky News after meeting with a group of pupils from Darlington who have spent a year participating in regular focus groups about smartphones and social media, organised by their Labour MP Lola McEvoy.

They took part in a survey of 1,000 children from the town, mostly aged 14 and 15, which found that 40% of them spent at least six hours a day online. One in five spent as long as eight hours scrolling.

Most of the under-16s (55%) had seen inappropriate sexual or violent content – often unprompted. And three-quarters of the under-16s had been contacted online by strangers.

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