Scottish Youth Parliament urge Burnham to rethink social media ban
A letter to the Prime Minister is calling on him to speak to young people before going ahead with the ban
The Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) has called on the Prime Minister to come to Scotland to discuss the planned ban on social media for under 16s.
It’s due to come into place for spring 2027, with more than 150 young people and organisations signing a letter to Andy Burnham.
Among the signatories are the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, Children in Scotland, Together (Scotland), and Forced Children Scotland.
SYP Chair and MSYP for Glasgow Cathcart Ellie Craig told Clyde 1 young people must be consulted on legislation affecting them directly.
"We don't need virtue signalling"
She said: “We don’t need virtue signalling of a promise to work with young people, we need to know in practical terms how will young people be included in this policy making progress?
“How will the Prime Minister hear the views of young people directly on a large scale, hear the views of young people in Scotland directly?”
SYP campaigners say they should be allowed “meaningful participation” to share their views with politicians.
The letter also asks the UK Government to commit to carrying out a children’s rights impact assessment on the proposed ban before it is introduced.
"We're continuing to listen"
A similar ban is already in place in Australia, however research from the University of Newcastle in New South Wales found 80% of young people were still accessing social media, three months after the ban in December 2025.
A UK Government spokesperson said: “We ran one of the largest consultations this government has undertaken, hearing from 116,000 people, including young people, and their views have directly shaped these policies.
“Two thirds of young people responding told us they supported a minimum age of 16 for at least some social media.”
To this, Ellie said: “While this might be quite an exceptionally high number of a UK Government consultation, when you do actually dive into those statistics, only 14,000 of them were actually children themselves, and that’s only 12% of the overall consultation.
"These harms don't magically stop when you get to 16"
“What we’re trying to say is that we don’t believe that young people, and young people in Scotland don’t believe, that they’ve been adequately consulted or had their views heard on what they think about a social media ban.”
The UK Government spokesperson continued: “We’re continuing to listen as we finalise details, which will be published by the end of the year.
“We’ll keep working with young people as we implement these changes to make the online world safer.”
The SYP is arguing that they should be included in discussions around making the web safer.
Ellie told Clyde 1 the worry is young people will be ill equipped to deal with social media, if there isn’t proper education.
"How do we educate parent, and teachers, and young people"
She said: “These harms don’t magically stop when you get to 16, and actually if young people do continue accessing social media like they have in the Australian example, then they’re going to be doing that without the support from trusted adults around them.”
She continued: “While in online spaces, there are a lot of harms, actually it’s about how do we educate parents, and teachers, and young people themselves on what those dangers are, and how we can be using social media and some of these platforms more responsibly.”
Another concern raised was around local and Scottish Parliament election information.
Young people in Scotland can vote from the age of 16, which the SYP worries would mean some will miss out on pre-election information which is frequently shared on social media.
Ellie said she doesn’t want the ban to lead to a disinvestment in futures.
She said: “If young people are getting to 16 and they’re voting and they’re becoming more active citizens in their communities, and they’ve not had access to social media, when that is now such a big part of the ways communities interact, then they’re not going to have those skills, and they’re not going to have that learning to be able to take that forward.”
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