David Willetts: Care is needed when regulating young people’s lives – protection not restraint is the key

David Willetts is President of the Resolution Foundation and is a member of the House of Lords.

 The dramatic shift to much tougher regulation of social media is driven above all by growing evidence of its damage to children.

There is a clear correlation between the rise of mental health problems amongst younger people and access to social media.

The endless comparison with apparently better looks and better experiences of other people on social media together with narratives about self-harm and committing suicide all add up to a recipe for increased unhappiness and distress if not worse. Versions of the Australian ban on access to social media amongst young people are now being adopted in other Western countries. Bans on mobile phones in schools are growing too. Conservatives are prominent in these campaigns here.  Tory peers such as John Nash, Diana Barran and Gaby Bertin have taken the lead in adding more restrictive amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill in the Lords.

The move finally to constrain the activities of Big Tech seems to be following the same pattern as the Victorian Factory Acts regulating business after the Industrial Revolution. They began with measures to protect children and Conservatives played a key role then too. Indeed, I drew on such evidence to define a Conservative as a free marketeer with children. The duty to protect the next generation before they are independent adults constrains the belief in the free market.

There is one tricky angle however for Conservatives to look out for.

If the Party is so clearly recognising the damage done by social media it does suggest that there is a real increase in mental health issues leading to an increase in claims for benefits. That does not mean the state should just pay out benefits passively but the increase in claims cannot be dismissed as entirely bogus. It makes sense to do more to promote resilience as well – so for example going into higher education appears to lower risks of mental ill-health and increase the chances of working even while experiencing mental ill-health.

Regulation is a legitimate tool to protect young people but there are also dangers in taking it too far.

Regulation can sometimes work against the interests of the young. Like so many other measures it can be captured by older generations to constrain the young. The regulation of financial services after the crash is an example.

Part of the underlying pattern of the life cycle is that young people tend to be borrowers and older people tend to be savers and lenders. The bank of mum and dad is just an individual example of a wider pattern. The state itself often follows the same pattern – providing resources for people when they are younger and collecting it back off them through taxes and student loan repayments when they are older.

Tightening the conditions for lending money therefore tends to restrict younger people’s access to funds. After the financial crash there was a move to tighten the rules on mortgage lending. This reduced the banks’ exposure to the risk of mortgage defaults if interest rates rose. Everyone with savings in the bank (older people) got even greater protection but people trying to take out a mortgage (younger people) found it harder. Getting the balance right is hard. Terry Burns, the former head of the Treasury, argues that we tightened up too much after the crash and this is one reason for Britain’s growth performance.

Mortgage lending is one example of this wider problem. The rules limiting mortgage borrowing and requiring substantial deposits went too far. Young people who had not got the necessary deposit ended up in private rented accommodation paying more in rent than they would have had to pay on a mortgage. And the amount they were spending on rents made it harder to save for a deposit as well. The past 18 months have seen significant easing of the rules. 95 per cent mortgages with a 5 per cent deposit are much easier than they used to be.

Overall there are lessons here on how effective, pragmatic Government can work. The lack of regulation on young people’s access to social media left them vulnerable: the interests of tech companies were put ahead of the need of children and regulations are now being tightened. The regulations on young adult access to mortgages were too tight as they put too much weight on the need to protect banks and have  now been eased.

The guiding principle is to put the interests of young people first.