But is a ban really the answer . I dont think we should expect kids to use their phone less, because were not. Were not. Im not. Youre not. I dont think anyone is. On the outskirts of birmingham, 14 year old josh says he can spend up to ten hours a day on his smartphone. He messages his friends and scrolls through hundreds of tiktok videos. Its pretty much like my best friend. Like, i use it every single day. I always have to have it next to me because, like, i wont get scared that im being like, left out, or something. During the week, Joshs Mum makes him leave his smartphone downstairs at night. But at the weekend its a different story. I, like, watch My Phone throughout the night. My phone would be, like, constantly going off, which will wake me up, and then ill have to check it, just to see if im, like, missing anything important. Normally at four in the morning its not that important. Hes very tired the next day. Because hes been up all night and hes not had enough sleep. Sometimes, even when hesl asleep you can go in and hes still holding the phone and its still playing a tiktok video, or something. A few miles away, 13 year old keah is also rarely off her phone. When im not at school, i probably use it, like, a lot. Like, most of the day. She scrolls through dozens of videos an hour and chats to friends and family around the country. Sometimes i stay up all night, maybe until about, like, 5am, Watching Tiktok or playing games, or watching netflix, or anything like that. I just scroll and scroll and scroll. Its terrible. Sometimes ill go to my sisters and the family will meet there and shelljust go upstairs and be on her phone. And thats the time when i feel like i would like her tojust put the phone down and have herfamily time. Many of us are obsessed with our smartphones, but whats the impact on our kids . From looking at keah and joshs Social Media Feeds, theyre not seeing anything thats too bad. But, as the bbc� s disinformation and Social Media correspondent, ive seen countless harmful posts that many teenagers have been exposed to, and ive investigated the Part Theyve played in violence, suicide, and even murder. A third of 8 to 17 year olds in the uk say theyve seen something worrying or nasty on Social Media in the past year. What are the things that people are most worried about . People are most worried about violent content, and what we hearfrom children as well is that its often the case that they see this violent content as unavoidable. Access to pornography is also one concerning area where children are accessing pornographic content younger and younger in age. Tends to be a minority of them that get exposed to the most harmful content. What we know, however, is that once you are exposed to that harmful content, it becomes unavoidable. Radical moves are being proposed to protect kids around the world. Floridas banned Social Media for under ills. France is talking about a Smartphone Ban for under 13s, and in the uk, calls to delay giving kids smartphones are growing. So, what would it look like if we take kids phones away . Im about to conduct a not very scientific experiment to help me find out. In birmingham, Smartphone Obsessivesjosh and Keah Have agreed to give up their phones, tablets and personal laptops for a week. I feel quite nervous about it because then its just not going to. Its going to be really weird not being able to, like, Message Everyone every day. I think my main feeling will definitelyjust be being bored because when im feeling bored, im just like, ill Go OnMy Phone. So lets start with your phone. In it goes. 0h Weve got everything else. Thank you very much. Their mums will look after all their devices. I think shes going to go Stir Crazy by The End of the week, but well see. Im quite excited to see| whats going to happen, im not going to lie. Were giving both Teenagers Brick phones with no internet access, in case theres an emergency. So, this is your new phone. What . a very old phone. Do you like it . Yeah. Theres only numbers. Its like being a kid when i was a kid. I do you know how to turn it on, josh . I have no clue its like christmas. Theyve agreed to let us install cameras in their homes to see what happens. Laughter goodnight. Its the first couple of days of our experiment. Josh used to be woken in the night by friends messages, but now hes sleeping better and starts the week with purpose. My day was, like, a lot more productive. Like, i ended up Writing A to do list, and at The End, i wasjust so impressed with myself. I cleaned my room. Like, i got the vacuum out and everything. I even got the polish out. I think its actually immaculate right now. Across town, keah is finding the first couple of days more difficult than josh. As soon as you left, i was just. I felt like i was just like, i need My Phone. Um. Um, yeah, iwas complaining a lot. Id just describe it as bored and irritable. Around two thirds of 12 to 17 year olds in the uk say being online helps them build or keep friendships. Many of keahs friends dont live close by, so without her phone she feels lost. Id Usuallyjust Facetime my friends and i was missing that the most. I love facetime with my friends and just playing games with them. Shes agitated in a way. Shes a little bit more snappy as well. Its not easy for keah because her mums on her own phone all the time. We all use them now to do everything from paying bills to ordering food. Tonight, dessert� s on the menu. I think right now im jealous of her because i cant Go OnMy Phone. I did know that i was going to struggle for, like, the first bit, but i didnt know i was going to struggle this hard. If we took phones away from children, i dont think we would overnight have happier children. Young people say the phone is the solution rather than the cause of the problem, so its how they relax when school is stressful, or how they get in touch with their friends when theyre feeling lonely or worried about some things. Its one thing to control how much children use their phones at home, but what about at school . Guys, put your phones away, please. Here at the 03 academy in langleyjust outside birmingham, Headteacher Peter Lee oversees a strict policy. Morning, guys good morning are We LangleyListeners Today . At the start of every day, students phones are locked in a safe, and phones found after this are confiscated for five days. I can see the kind of criticism at times i its draconian and so forth. Ithink, however, the benefits outweigh the negatives. The benefits for me are disruption free learning. You know, ive visited some schools that allow children i on ipads or their own devices at lunchtime, and theyre just sat on a phone. Studies suggest its too early to say whether taking away smartphones completely would improve performance at school. But students here say giving up their phones during the School Day helps them focus. Social media is very addictive. Youre just sat there scrolling, and then the next thing you know, youve gone like four hours. Ijust watch recommended videos and im sat there for ages. Im like, just one more minute. Yeah. One more minute turns into another hour. Many teachers are also worried that kids are being bullied on Social Media. Here at 03 academy, taking phones off students during the day doesnt stop arguments kicking off at night. I would say 50 of our pastoral issues that the Team Deal with come from overnight,. Or over the holiday especially, that have happened on Social Media, and then parents are saying, this child said. This about my child, and its all on kind of whatsapp i or snapchat and so forth. Children are more likely to be bullied in person than they are online. But if it happens on a phone, it can feel relentless. What we do have is evidence that bullying is now more 24 7 because its always there on your phone, and its hard to escape. When it happens to you, its more all encompassing. I think thats notably worse than it used to be. Josh in birmingham, josh has resorted to desperate measures. Tunelessly keah is doing much better than she was and is keah is doing much better than she was and is using the time to get out of the house more. I love being outside, and i love, like, going out for walks. I love going out to eat. I love going out shopping. Its actually a really nice day. Only a quarter of kids in England Today say they play out on the street, compared with more than three quarters of 55 to 64 year olds, who say they did. More cautious parenting plays a part in that. A lot of Keahs Life is on her phone, simply because i dont let her hang out on the streets with her friends. Like, if she wants to go out. With her friends, no problem. Ill go and grab your friend. Ill take you to the cinema. Ill pick you up afterwards. Its been good to just go out for a walk and spend time with my dog and my mum, just relaxing. Over the last. 10, 20 years, we have reduced free play time at school. We have reduced what many children used to love, which was the walk to and from school because we drive them about everywhere. Um. They dont know where they can go and casually meet their friends in a way that, you know, parents are going to let them do. So they Go On their phone. The more time kids and adults spend on smartphones, the more money the Social Media Companies can make through ad revenue. They use Computer Systems called algorithms to recommend stuff they think we might like, based on the preferences of other users like us, and also what we show an interest in. Its all to keep us coming back, but some of the content that can keep us gripped can also be harmful. Kai is 18 and says hes had violent and misogynistic content recommended on various Social Media apps since he was 15. Some of the stuff is just like really gratuitous violence. Mm. And they push it like its a good thing. Kais into boxing and martial arts, but he doesnt want to see the violent images he says the algorithms are serving up on instagram and tiktok. Think back to when you were about 16, 15. What kinds of stuff would you tend to see on your Social Media Feeds . All sorts, to be honest. Its like you just scroll. You know, you get video after video. It could be a dog, and then next minute its someone getting run over or a car crash, or something like that. Just out of nowhere. Spontaneous. Is it like youve searched something and its come up, or is it, like, unexpected . No. Its on your feed. It escalates very quickly. You could like it or you could comment your opinion be like, i dont agree with this, but youll still get even more and more and more and more. It kind ofjust stains your brain, and thats all you think about for the rest of the day. Like, ive tried putting the little not interested thing, but then three videos later youll get another one. Theres nothing you can do and it feels a bit. Itsjust weird, and it ruins your mood. It makes you a bit numb. Like, it desensitises you to everything. Kais noticed how constantly watching harmful content can distort the views of young men his age, including about women. Youre hooked in it and you watch it and you like it, then youll get another video on it and another video on it, and all of a sudden its your whole personality. Its your whole opinion. Its everything. Kai says his feeds look very different from those of girls he knows the same age. Why is that . Andrew kaung worked at Tiktok In Dublin for 18 months until 2022, as part of a team focused on protecting users. He and a colleague decided to check out what users on the app were seeing, including some 16 year olds. If youre a female, a 16 year old who lives in london, theyre just usually interested in the pop singers. | the songs. Er, make up. Um, whereas, like, its very different for a teenage boy. | so stabbing, Knifing Type of content. Um, sometimes sexual content and of course, | mostly with the misogynistic sort of controversial Hate Content as well. Most content which is removed from tiktok for breaking the rules is done by artificial intelligence. Trickyjudgment calls, though, require human moderators. Tiktok says it had specialist moderators when andrew worked there. He says he proposed hiring more. At the time, they were just like, great idea. I good job, but its too costly. Were not goingi to implement it. Um, so i was like, ok. I kind of expected that because if something i involved. An investment, i and quite a lot of investment and a change, like, its very hard to persuade people. I tiktok says 40,000 Safety Staff Work alongside innovative technology, and it expects to invest more than 2 Billion in safety this year. It says it doesnt use gender to recommend content, has settings for teens to block content that may not be suitable, and set 60 minute limits, and doesnt allow extreme violence or misogyny. Meta, which owns instagram, says it wants to give teens positive and age appropriate experiences. It says its introduced over 50 different tools and resources, including for parental supervision, limiting screen time and reducing sensitive content. Keah got her first smartphone when she was seven, and soon found herself thinking about how she looked. When i was younger, i definitely used to feel insecure. Like, when i was like nine. Id see these girls on tiktok with, like, the really nice bodies and theyd be, like, dancing. I used to wear baggy clothes because i thought that it was, like, disgusting to be fat. And i used to think i was, like, fat when i wasnt. But Social Media, and theyre like unrealistic things, like, made me feel like that. The time she was saying those things was really upsetting. I like, she was chatting to me, | she was chatting to my sister. Having a strong family helped keah at that time massively. I it was. It was hard, but we did it. Those in favour of banning smartphones for kids say theyre fuelling a child Mental Health crisis. Being a teenager is a really hard period of everyones life, and its kind of with the tsunami of Social Media on top of children. I think in maybe 20 years time, 30 years time, we will look back on mobile devices like we view cigarettes. I personally would ban them and i think we need Government Directive to do that. The Evidence Isnt clear. In the last decade, Kids Smartphone Ownership has rocketed. Since 2017, theres been a rise in suspected Mental Health issues in children in england. But that doesnt necessarily mean smartphones cause poorer Mental Health. Theres no convincing evidence for a causal link. Weve been looking at this from a Research Perspective for years, if not decades, and weve not found those clear Smoking Gun causal effects. When we do the surveys of young peoples wellbeing, one of the top anxieties they report is academic pressure, which has definitely increased. Competitive pressures. Um, they talk about, worry about how they look, which we could link to the phone, we could link to broader consumer culture. There are lots of pressures on families and on children nowadays of which, you know, the phone is a small, if very visible, part. Right. Shall we make some dinner . What are we having . Wraps. Back in birmingham, josh is spending more time with his mum, carrie. Its been nice. Ive really enjoyed spending time with josh this week. I i thought we were besties. We are besties. I dont usually cook with my mum because im always, like, thinking ive got more important things to do on My Phone when i actually dont. The more important thing is, like, getting to spend time with my mum. But its still a struggle. Do you feel like youre missing out because youve not got your phone and, i like, everyone else is still talking to each other . Yeah, ido. Especially, like, this is a generation where, like, everyone speaks on their phone. I think at the start of the week it was a lot more easier. But now im thinking that its like a lot more tricky. Pretty much my whole life is on My Phone because, like, thats how i organise things, like to go out with my mates and to, like. Thats how i have conversations that i might not be able to have at school. Ive tried my hardest around josh not to really use My Phone as much. I do tend to get lost in tiktok myself. I you think, oh, illjust have ten minutes of looking, and then the next thing its an hour and a half later. I ive maybe burnt a pizza or two. Keah is spending more time with her mum too. Vienna works at a Go Karting Track and shes brought keah along to stop her feeling bored. There are lots of things parents could do, some of which are about providing alternatives, about doing other things together, about finding, just kind of ways of keeping the phone in balance, so that its not all focused on that bit of technology. This was much better compared to My Phone its so fun because youre actually doing something, other than just like sitting there and being on the phone youre actually doing something. Its really fun. For years, Social Media Companies have largely been left to police themselves. Andrew kaung, whos worked at both tiktok and meta, says that Approach Hasnt worked. We are asking a Privatel Company whose interest is to promote their product to moderate themselves, i which is like asking i a tiger not to eat you. Kids have to be 13 to get on most Social Media apps. Now, a new Uk Law will force Social Media firms to verify kids ages and stop them recommending porn or other harmful content. Media Regulator Ofcom is in charge of enforcing it. Fixing algorithms is a very important element of the solution. So content that is pornographic, promotes suicide, Self Harm or eating disorders we are suggesting that all that content should be out of the feed of children and young people. Then for other categories like violent content or hateful content, we want the prevalence of that content to be very much reduced in the algorithm. How feasible is it in reality . Im an optimist in terms of the potential of technology. And is it possible . I think of course it is possible. Ofcom says it can fine Social Media Companies, or could even bring criminal prosecutions if they dont do enough. But measures wont come in until 2025. Its saturday and. Ahhh i get My Phone back today the week without smartphones is over. How do you feel . Excited. There you go. He screeches i get to hold My Phone again feel as though ill cry on whatsapp ive got 62 messages from my drama group. Its so overwhelming, checking everyones messages. Makes me feel, um, like, good again. How does it feel having it back and seeing all the messages . It feels. 0h i love it. Im very happy that i finally got it back. Im a little bit worried thati weve already lost him back to the world of the phone. Like, ive realised that, like, Social Media is just. Not that great. Ifeel better when im Notjust Scrolling and scrolling, like, endlessly, for hours. Our experiment has revealed how hard it is for kids and their parents to live without smartphones. I think the focus on bans is maybe the wrong thing at the minute. This thing that weve got| in our pocket is amazing. Of course there are going to be benefits to that, i but there are negatives there as well. And we need to consider what the balance is between benefits and risks. What many teenagers want is to keep the good bits on their phones and get rid of the bad bits. Ofcom says Social Media Companies need to give kids more power to decide what they dont want to see. If i say i dislike it, i dislike it. You can stop showing me now. I feel like Social Media Companies dont respect your opinion. Our phones are here to stay. Now the pressures on to make sure kids can use them more safely. I dont think they should take away smartphones for kids. L i think theyre. I think theyre great for learning. I think theyre great for learning. Great for socialising, for kids that cant go out. I dont think theres any comeback from how far weve gone into the digital world. Hopefully theyll just find ways of making sure that the younger kids are more protected than they have been in the past. Goodnight. Live from london this is bbc news. Sir Keir Starmer meets with his irish counterpart in dublin aiming to forge a new relationship post brexit. It a new relationship post brexit. Is really important to it is really important to me, to my government. And i think it is the limit for reset and where we put meaning behind those words. Boeings Starliner Capsule returns to earth but without its crew. Theyll have to remain on the international Space Station until february. The un calls for a � full investigation into the killing of a us turkish woman in the occupied west bank. And im live in preston, as radio twos in the Park Festival continues with set to headline. Shaznay lewis is on the main stage. Hello and welcome im lukwesa burak. Sir Keir Starmer has become the first british Prime Minister to visit the Republic Of Ireland in five years. Downing street says saturdays visit Marks A � new era of Co Operation and friendship� between britain and ireland