‘Worrying' levels of screen time means young people losing confidence to socialise in person, minister warns

The Guardian

06-08-2025

Update:
Date: 2025-08-06T07:53:12.000Z
Title: Starmer
Content: Good morning. Keir is out on a visit today and he will be doing broadcast interviews. It may be the only time we hear from him this week, and there is no shortage of topics that journalists will want to ask him about. By the end of the day we may get new, or newish, lines on Gaza, the 'one in, one out' returns deal with France, tax rises and the black hole in the government's finances (priced at more than £40bn, according to a report from a well-respected thinktank today), Ukraine, the case for and against disclosing suspects' immigration status and the demonstration planned for this weekend against the decision to proscribe Palestinian Action.
But wants to talk about something else – less party political, less 'Westminster agenda', but arguably as or even more important than these other topics: what the internet is doing to our children.
Officially, and Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, are just announcing an £88m investment in youth clubs. But they also want to talk about what they suggest is the harm being done to children by social media, who they say are spending so much time on their screens that they are losing the ability to socialise in person with other people.
In a statement in the government's news release about the funding, says:
Growing up today is hard for young people. As they navigate their way through the online world, too often they find themselves isolated at home and disconnected from their communities.
As a government, we have a duty to act on this worrying trend. Today's investment is about offering a better alternative: transformative, real-world opportunities that will have an impact in communities across the country, so young people can discover something new, find their spark and develop the confidence and life skills that no algorithm can teach.
In an interview on the Today programme, Nandy was asked to elaborate on what theis 'worrying trend' was. She replied:
It keeps me awake at night. We when we were first elected into government last year, one of the first things that I did was to appoint a group of young people to oversee the first national youth strategy in several decades. I was astonished to find that we didn't have one.
What we found through that process is that the majority of young people – and it does appear to be a majority – spend all, or almost all, of their free time alone in their bedrooms, online, and are losing their confidence to connect to people in the real world.
A significant number of them say that they have no adult in the world who they would trust to help and support them. That is really, really concerning.
And one of the reasons that we're announcing this funding today is to open up opportunities to young people in youth clubs and in schools to live richer, larger lives because there is a pressing need for our generation to step up and help before it's too late.
Here's Eleni Courea's overnight story about the initiative.
I will post more from Nandy's interviews soon.
The visit is taking place in Hertfordshire this morning. Other than that, the diary is relatively empty, but, of course, that does not mean there will be nothing to cover; news is not always predictable.
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