Alarming rise of social media use among toddlers
Almost 800,000 children under the age of five are now likely to be using social media platforms in the UK, intensifying concerns around the country’s ability to protect the younger generation online.
The figures, based of Ofcom’s recent research, reveal an alarming rise in very young children using platforms intended for teenagers or adults.
It revealed that 37 per cent of parents of three to five year-olds say their child uses at least one social media platform, up from 29 per cent in 2024 – a year increase of around 220,000 kids.
Using population data, analysts have estimated that as many as 814,000 pre-school children could now be active on social networks that are supposed to be restricted to over 13s.
This rise comes despite the UK’s Online Safety Act, which came into force over the summer, and requires platforms to stop children accessing various forms of content through measures like age-verification, and stronger controls on direct messaging.
Ofcom have said that progress has been made following the Act’s implementation, with mor than a dozen high-risk sites either blocked or withdrawn from the British market.
Traffic to adult sites has also dropped by around a third since July.
But the scale of the problem is still growing, with one in four eight and nine year-olds who play games online report interacting with strangers, while three-quarters of parents remain worried about exposure to inappropriate content.
Regulators also warn that the widespread use of VPNs risks undermining new protections, allowing young users to bypass age checks altogether.
Concerns about the developmental impact of early and prolonged screen use are also mounting.
The Centre for Social Justice’s recent report highlights rising anxiety, sleep disruption and declining attention spans among young children, with schools reporting behaviour increasingly shaped by online norms.
Teachers described pupils lacking core strength and self-regulation after long periods using tablets at home.
Calls for stricter legislation
The new analysis has fueled renewed calls for stricter legal limits.
Former schools minister Lord Nash has tabled an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill proposing a ban on social media for under-16s, citing Australia’s model introduced in September, which mandates rigorous age verification and blocks younger users from addictive algorithms.
He said: “This research is deeply alarming. With hundreds of thousands of under-fives now on these platforms, children who haven’t yet learned to read being fed content and algorithms designed to hook adults should concern us all.”
The Centre for Social Justice is calling for digital protections to be strengthened as part of a national prevention strategy rather than leaving families and schools to cope alone.
Its recommendations include raising the age of digital consent to 16, banning smartphones in schools and launching a public health campaign highlighting the harms of social media.
The debate is unfolding against a wider backdrop of concern about whether Britain’s online safety regime is keeping up with fast-moving technology.
MPs recently warned that the Online Safety Act contains “major holes” and is ill-equipped to deal with legal but harmful content amplified by social-media algorithms.
What’s more, the committee urged ministers to impose new duties on tech companies to downgrade material flagged by fact-checkers and to open their recommendation systems to scrutiny.
This came amid fears of a repeat of the 2024 riots which were partly fuelled by viral disinformation.