Government should impose screen time limits for children on social media, minister suggests

'For an adult I wouldn’t want to restrict the amount of time you are on a platform but for different ages it might be right to have different time cut-offs'

Age verification system could stop children spending a lot of time online (PA)

The Government could impose limits on the amount of time children spent on social media, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has suggested.

Matt Hancock said the negative impact on young people from too much screen time was a “genuine concern”.

He suggested an age-verification system could be used to tackle the problem.

“There is a genuine concern about the amount of screen time young people are clocking up and the negative impact it could have on their lives," he told The Times. “For an adult I wouldn’t want to restrict the amount of time you are on a platform but for different ages it might be right to have different time cut-offs.”

His comments come after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt last month said excessive social media use posed as big a threat to children’s health as smoking or obesity.

A small-scale poll by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) recently found most school leaders believed the mental health and wellbeing of pupils had suffered as a result of social media use over the past 12 months.

A report by the Royal Society for Public Health published last year linked social media to higher levels of anxiety and depression. Around 850,000 children in the UK under the age of 16 have a diagnosed mental illness.

The Government has said it wants the UK to be “the safest place in the world to be online” and has announced it will introduce a new code of practice this year, setting out the minimum expectations on social media companies.

Press Association contributed to this report