Starmer vows to tackle social media’s ‘addictive features’ to protect children

Prime minister says UK must do more to regulate against potential harms after landmark ruling in US court

Keir Starmer has said he will tackle “addictive features” in social media amid increasing signs the UK government is preparing to crack down on risks to children after a US court verdict that held Meta and YouTube responsible for harms caused by designing addictive technology.

The prime minister said the verdict in a California court signalled a rising public expectation for more aggressive regulation and said: “I’m absolutely clear that we need to go further.”

“The status quo isn’t good enough,” he said. “We need to do more to protect children. That’s why we’re consulting about issues such as banning social media for under-16s. I’m very keen that we do more on addictive features within social media.”

Jurors in the US found the tech companies to be negligent, having failed to provide adequate warnings about the potential dangers of their products. The jury awarded the plaintiff – a 20-year-old woman who said she became hooked on social media as a child – damages of $6m (£4.5m), with Meta to pay 70% and YouTube the remainder.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were among campaigners celebrating the verdict, calling it “a reckoning”. “For too long, families have paid the price for platforms built with total disregard for the children they reach,” they said in a statement. “We stand with every parent and young person who refused to be silenced.

“Today, the truth has been heard and precedent has been set. Let this be the change – where our children’s safety is finally prioritised above profit.”

Google, which owns YouTube, said it would appeal against the jury verdict, which came after nine days of deliberation in the first lawsuit concerning social media’s alleged harm to young people to go to trial.

“We disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal,” said a spokesperson for Google. “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”

Meta had previously said: “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options”.

In Brussels, Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s digital chief, said the case, along with similar pending cases, would send “a very clear message” that online platforms needed to take seriously “the risks they are posing”.

Other campaigners for safer social media welcomed the jury decision as a potential watershed in efforts to reform the way platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X are regulated.

“The ruling will rightly send shock waves across the tech sector and governments and highlights how we need to legislate for safer tech that protects young people and their wellbeing,” said the Molly Rose Foundation, which was set up after the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell who was exposed to harmful content on Instagram. “[The government] can make safety and wellbeing the price for tech firms to pay for doing business in the UK.”

“Ethically, this has to serve as a warning for the wider technology sector,” said Thomas Lancaster at Imperial College London’s department of computing. “It’s fine to have policies regarding who can use your service, but if these policies can’t be enforced, that is putting the people at risk – the very people who the policies are designed to protect.”

With more similar cases pending in US courts, Sacha Haworth, the executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, told Reuters: “The era of big tech invincibility is over. After years of gaslighting from companies like Google and Meta, new evidence and testimony have pulled back the curtain and validated the harms young people and parents have been telling the world about for years.”