Instagram is fuelling progress of gender confusion in youngsters says high knowledgeable as she warns academics towards letting pre-pubescent pupils transition at college

Social media platforms like Instagram are fuelling the growing amount of gender confusion among children, a top expert said today. 

Baroness Cass said that such websites had ‘misled’ young people into thinking they were trans unless they adhered to a very narrow idea of what a ‘typical’ boy or girl is. 

The esteemed paediatrician spoke out after the Department for Education last week published a document for teachers that opened the door for primary school children as young as four to ‘socially transition’ in ‘rare’ circumstances. 

The peer warned that schools should err on the side of ‘super caution’ against allowing it in almost all cases, suggesting all in but a tiny fraction of cases they will grow out of it without external pressure.

Appearing on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg Baroness Cass, who wrote a landmark report into NHS gender identity services, hit out at the role of social media in fuelling dysphoria in recent years.

‘It’s complex, there’s never going to be simple answers to this, but there’s a whole series of different pressures on young people now,’ she said.

 Plus there’s a different kind of cultural context where people are in some ways less locked into gender stereotype, so they can feel more flexible about their – about how they identify. And that’s healthy. 

‘But I think what has kind of misled children is the belief that if you are not a typical girl, if you like playing with trucks, or boys who like dressing up or that you have same-sex attraction, that means that you’re trans and actually it’s not like that but those are all normal variations.

‘I think children and young people were being given a narrative that it’s not ok to be anything but absolutely typical of the other girls on Instagram.’

Baroness Hilary Cass said that acting too soon and giving confused pre-teens permission to chose their gender risked ‘not allowing them to develop and work it out’ for themselves.

It came after the Department for Education last week published a document for teachers that opened the door for children as young as four to ‘socially transition’ in ‘rare’ circumstances 

Shadow education secretary Laura Trott said: ‘Social media is steering vulnerable children down pathways they may not fully understand. The idea it helps them ”find their tribe” is misguided. 

‘The most vulnerable must be protected from undue influence. No child should be forced into life changing decisions they cannot reverse.’

Baroness Cass said that acting too soon and giving confused pre-teens permission to chose their gender at school risked ‘not allowing them to develop and work it out’ for themselves.

And she added that transitioning should be ‘rare and particularly rare in pre-pubescent children’.

‘If they socially transition too early we think they can get locked onto a trajectory that may not have been the correct natural trajectory for them’, she said, adding that children had been ‘weaponised’ and misled about the realities of transitioning by social media.

‘Back in the day in the 1970s, when they first started having clinics for children with gender dysphoria and gender incongruence, they were mostly pre-pubertile boys who felt that they were girls.

‘Left to their own devices, because we didn’t have hormone treatments and the internet and all the rest then, most of them grew out of it and became gay men.

‘So the risk of getting a child very fixed in a certain way, of being too early, is that you are not allowing them to develop and work it out.’

The new DfE guidance states that a child’s birth sex must be recorded in school and college records. 

It also stated that schools should seek parents’ views on a child’s request to change gender, as well as always considering any clinical advice families have received. 

No member of staff can decide by themselves to transition a child without agreeing it with the school and parents, and schools must not ‘initiate’ transition – they can only ‘respond’ to requests. Schools should seek parents’ views unless there is a reason not to.

The proposed guidance, published late on Thursday just before Parliament went on half-term break, states that schools should consider avoiding ‘rigid rules based on gender stereotypes’ and should take time to understand children’s feelings while being aware of ‘potential vulnerabilities’ such as them facing bullying or needing mental health support.