This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Mandatory limits could be imposed on the amount of time children are allowed to spend on social media, the culture secretary has suggested.

Matt Hancock said social media companies had failed in their duty of care to children.

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“We are going to require them to take that care,” he told the Times. “For an adult I wouldn’t want to restrict the amount of time you are on a platform but for different ages it might be right to have different time cutoffs.

“I think there is a genuine concern about the amount of screen time young people are clocking up and the negative impact it could have on their lives.”

It was not clear how the rules would be enforced, but Hancock said a system could be similar to the plans to enforce age verification for online pornography.

But Jim Killock, the executive director of the Open Rights Group, said: “It is very important to help parents with their children but ministers will always find it hard to regulate the detail of people’s lives.

“Do we really want to teach children that the government is watching them on social media, and deciding when they’re banned from talking to their friends?

“Unfortunately what actually happens is that people get around whatever is imposed, and ministers end up playing cat and mouse over unachievable goals. Digital policy needs to do better than that.”