Bereaved dad and mom accuse Labour of being weak on banning social media for under-16s as Kemi Badenoch warns that no youngster is protected on-line

Bereaved parents have accused Sir Keir Starmer of being too slow to introduce a social media ban for under-16s as Kemi Badenoch warned that no child is safe online.

Relatives of teenagers who died as a result of cyber-bullying and viral challenges urged the Prime Minister to act now in order to keep others safe, as they appeared at a press conference organised by the Conservative leader.

Mrs Badenoch revealed that she has stepped in to stop her own nine-year-old son from playing gaming platform Roblox because strangers were able to contact him, as well as removing YouTube from her TV.

The mother-of-three said the Labour government needs to stop ‘dragging its heels’ and introduce an Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s, with a consultation not due to be launched until next month.

‘This problem is global, it is widespread, and it is about time that in the UK we do something about it,’ she said at an event in central London alongside campaigning parents.

‘We need a ban on social media for under-16s. We need the Government to stop dragging its heels. Social media is for adults. It is not for children.’

Asked if Labour had been too weak on the issue, Ellen Roome – who believes her 14-year-old son Jools died after an online challenge went wrong – replied: ‘I think I speak on behalf of all the parents here. We absolutely think the government is too weak.

‘We can’t make a difference for our children, they’re no longer here, but we can make a difference for the other children, and we spend our time campaigning to say, please, please protect other children, because not one of us wants another parent to be in our position.

‘There is nowhere else where there’s a product that is harming a child that we wouldn’t remove that product, fix it and give it back.’

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch at the event in London with bereaved parents

Mrs Badenoch claimed it would be easier to ‘police the age’ of users of apps such as TikTok and Instagram rather than ‘policing the content’ as the last Tory government had tried to do with the Online Safety Act.

And she warned: ‘There is an assumption out there that it has just happened to a few children. The numbers of bereaved families are growing every single day, and it’s lots of different harms.

‘It’s cyber-bullying, it’s blackmail, threats, dangerous challenges and murder, as we have seen. This is not about a moral panic. This is real, and we need to do something about it.

‘This can happen to any child, as the parents have said, these were not children who had issues, but those parents who think, “Oh, this isn’t going to happen to my child. My child is fine”. No child is safe, we don’t know who will be harmed by this.’

Asked by the Daily Mail if she wanted to ban specific platforms, as has happened in Australia, she replied: ‘The definition of social media has to be about what it is doing, rather than the name of the company.’

She said social media meant ‘platforms that allow strangers to connect with children, send them messages and provide endless content, often of a damaging nature’ and would not include WhatsApp.

And she went on: ‘I think Roblox is a very interesting example, because it doesn’t call itself social media.

Parents of children who have died as a result of cyber-bullying and viral challenges appeared alongside Kemi Badenoch and Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott

‘I recently allowed my nine-year-old son to get Roblox. I am now fighting to get him off it, and one of the things that I had to close down was chats coming in which I didn’t realise were part of Roblox. 

‘And there’s still ways, despite me shutting it down, the chats still keep appearing, and he now knows that this is a problem, so right now he has been banned from Roblox, he’s not thanking me for it.’

She said she had taken video-sharing website YouTube off her TV at home ‘because my children just kept watching all sorts of weird junk’ but she said it cannot be left to parents to take on powerful tech firms.