Tackling Child Social Media Use Like Big Tobacco Fight: UK Medics

London, United Kingdom: Britain's most senior doctors have compared the growing alarm about social media's dangers for young people to past experiences around smoking, as a government consultation on the topical issue ends Tuesday.

Launched in January, the "Growing Up In The Online World" consultation aims to help ministers draw up evidence-based screen time guidance for parents of children aged five to 16.

It comes amid increasing calls for Britain's government to follow Australia's lead and impose a ban on social media use for under-16s.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer was set on Tuesday to meet a group of bereaved parents who blame social media for contributing to their children's deaths, ahead of the consultation closing at the day's end.

In a submission to the consultation, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said social media and smartphone use now "ranks alongside smoking and wearing seatbelts in cars as a unifying force for the medical profession".

The academy's 50-page submission noted doctors are seeing a "wave of radicalised children" from exposure to "hateful, addictive and grossly distressing content".

Of the 454 doctors surveyed by the academy of 22 member royal colleges, half said they treated at least one child a week whose mental distress or physical injury was linked to online content.

"There is, I think, an overwhelming consensus that excessive screen time can harm children and young people," the academy's chair, Jeanette Dickson, said in the submission's foreword.

"We need to call this out unflinchingly rather than passively wait for someone else to prove causation."

Former health secretary Wes Streeting, who resigned earlier this month ahead of expectations he could challenge Starmer for the Labour leadership, told BBC Radio he backed a social media ban for under-16s.

"I think what we've seen from big tech is behaviour akin to big tobacco," he said.

"They know that the product they're designing is addictive, they know that it is harmful, and the business model is orientated towards getting kids while they're young," Streeting added.

Starmer has said he is not ruling out any options and pledged action to protect children.

But he has stressed that he wants to wait for the end of the consultation before making any final decisions.

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