Actress Kate Winslet has said that the government should require social media companies to impose age restrictions to lessen their negative effects on children’s mental health.
She claimed in an interview with the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that parents feel “utterly impotent” in terms of guiding their kids through social media.
Winslet suggested that security checks be stricter and that adults in positions of authority “should stand forward” to safeguard children.
She was speaking before the premiere of I Am Ruth, a new Channel 4 movie.
As the mother of a girl whose mental health starts to deteriorate as she becomes more and more consumed by the demands of social media, Winslet portrays the role opposite her real-life daughter Mia Threapleton in the feature-length drama.
Winslet recalled speaking with Dominic Savage, the film’s director, about how parents might assist “when they can see there’s a problem,” which led to the idea to concentrate on children’s mental health.
But she said that the drama needed to be about something other than a kid who is engrossed in their phone.
According to Winslet, it needed to address “what’s happening with that phone, how it affects their self-esteem, how it impacts on eating habits, and how it impacts on their mental state in terms of thinking about things like self-harm.”
Winslet portrays Ruth in the two-hour drama, which will air on Channel 4 on Thursday, December 8. Ruth is a single mother of two children, including Freya, who is 17 years old.
In the movie, Freya is seen becoming less outgoing and lagging in class as her engagement with social media gets more and more detrimental.
Kate Winslet said that the social media environment is “frightening to parents because we don’t know what’s there.”
“Since so many of their friendship groups are now developed on phones, inside phones, we don’t know what’s going on in them.
“It gets darker, trickier, and much, much harder for kids to traverse this environment as you delve deeper and deeper into it.
“I think that people, young children, are able to access things that emotionally they’re just not equipped or sophisticated enough to know how to absorb,” says the researcher.
Winslet responded that she had trouble with social media and its effects on young mental health when asked if she thought there should be greater legislative regulation of social media.
She stated,
“I really hope our government takes something to stop it. I do wish that there were some platforms that were restricted to those under a particular age. I wish security screenings were much more thorough.”
Kate Winslet stated that parents “are left floundering” and that there should be “greater protection and accountability.”
She spoke,
“Simply put, in my opinion, those who are aware that they could do more to safeguard our children ought to be taking action. They are aware of who they are, therefore they should just take action and improve.”
Winslet made her statement at a time when the government is being accused of weakening rules intended to control internet material.
Ministers scrapped measures from the Online Safety Bill last week that would have forced tech companies to remove damaging but lawful content.
Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, a youngster who took her own life after watching online material about suicide and self-harm, claimed that the measure had been weakened and that the change may have been made for political reasons to hasten its passage.
As stated in a statement to BBC News,
“unregulated social media is damaging our children and it must end,” said Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan.
The “strengthened Online Safety Bill” she is reintroducing to Parliament, she continued,
“would enable parents to see and act on the dangers sites pose to children.”
Adults will have control over what they see and interact with online, Ms. Donelan said, and young kids will be protected.
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