Mobile phone and social media companies should pay £1billion for children's mental health support, says expert

A former children’s commissioner today called for social media and mobile phone companies to be forced to pay for a massive mental health programme for young people.

Anne Longfield urged the next government to introduce a £1billion mental health recovery programme part-funded by a levy on social media and mobile phone companies.

She also called for an independent review into the impact of smart phones and social media on children’s health and development.

She said: “There is a children’s mental health epidemic affecting one in five children and young people. The impact of social media remains largely unknown, and policy is often motivated by headlines not evidence.”

It comes as the Centre for Young Lives, which Ms Longfield set up after she stepped down as children’s commissioner in 2021, set out a ten-point plan for the next government to boost children’s life chances.

The plan also calls for the new government to abolish the two-child benefit cap, to halve child poverty by 2029 and to expand free school meals to all children with families receiving Universal Credit. All primary school children should receive free school meals by the end of the next Parliament, the Centre said. Thisalready happens in London.

Ms Longfield, executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives, said: “In over four decades of working and campaigning to improve support and help for children and families, I can’t remember a less impressive Parliament than the one which has just dissolved. Half-hearted reforms to services and sticking plaster investment have failed to meet the scale of the challenges brought about by austerity, the Covid pandemic, and the cost of living crisis.”

She added: “While most of our children do OK, millions do not, and whoever wins the forthcoming general election will find an in-tray stacked with serious problems.”

The Centre for Young Lives also urged the next government to reform Ofsted inspections and to enable schools to provide children with safe places to play during holidays and weekends, funded by National Lottery Community Funding.

Ms Longfield added: “Our levels of child poverty are shocking and shameful. We should be mortified that a country as wealthy as ours has so many schools with food banks and clothes banks.

“Too many of our children are falling through the gaps. A new Government, whoever is elected, offers the chance of a reset and a new approach to boosting opportunities for all children, wherever they grow up and whatever their background.”