Mother of boy who may have died in TikTok challenge urges No 10 to ban social media

The mother of a teenager who believes he died in a TikTok challenge gone wrong has said Downing Street has been too slow to move towards a social media ban for under-16s, and accused the government of “kicking it down the road”.Ellen Roome, the mother of Jools Sweeney, 14, is among the families who will meet Keir Starmer on Tuesday as a consultation on a possible social media ban closes this week.“Come on, get a grip, let’s actually stand up, do something, make a decision,” she said on Today, on BBC Radio 4. “I don’t care if they take it away for adults and children until it’s safe, just take it away, fix it, and then we can give it back.”Roome said she hoped a ban would give technology companies the impetus to make the platforms safer. “They spend millions and billions of pounds on making their system. They could spend some money on actually fixing their system and say this is now a safe product, and give it back. But until it’s safe, I absolutely wholeheartedly say: take it away.”Anna Turley, the Labour Party chair, said the government would “seize this moment” but said it was right to have taken the time for a consultation.“We need to make sure that legislation and protection keeps pace with technology as it changes, and protects our children going forward,” she added. “We’ve got legislation in place already to enable us to take these powers, so we’ll be acting as soon as possible because we need to make sure we protect children going forward and we get this right.”The former health secretary Wes Streeting, who compared social media to tobacco in a Guardian interview on Monday, told Today that the tech companies were to blame for making their products so addictive.“They know that it is harmful, and the business model is orientated towards getting kids while they’re young, addicting them with the design features that are designed for addiction, to grab your attention and keep you on their platform for as long as possible,” he said.There was “a growing body of evidence about the impact of this technology on childhood, whether that is sleep, concentration, learning, health, wellbeing, including mental health. The harms are evident, and the precautionary principle should apply here.”Streeting said he had constantly urged stronger action behind closed doors while he was in cabinet. “I’m liberated from the obligations of collective responsibility, which means I can now say publicly what I think,” he said.“I made the same arguments inside government, I made them in cabinet, I made them in a number of cabinet committees and meetings where we were discussing issues surrounding education and wellbeing, but also violence against women and girls, where I think, again, we’ve got serious patterns of grooming and harmful behaviour.”Streeting said the evidence from Australia – which has banned social media for under-16s – was clear that it was preventing many children from harm, even if some were finding ways of circumventing the ban.“If it’s working for half of children, that’s better than it not working for any children at all, and I have to say that the lackadaisical approach to this particular type of harm, and the way in which technology is addling young people’s brains, impacting on their education and attainment, impacting on their health and wellbeing, it is pretty shocking.”Ministers have run the consultation for 12 weeks on whether or not to follow the Australian example of setting an age limit on access.Other measures could include putting age limits on certain app features, such as livestreaming, location sharing and infinite scrolling, where feeds reload automatically and the page never ends.Personalised algorithms, which create a bespoke content feed for users, could also be curbed and mandatory screen curfews are also under consideration.