Children’s mental health in the UK is ‘an emergency’ Luciana Berger tells JC event

“We're seeing extreme and unambiguously racist, antisemitic content and hate speech,” she told guests, adding that such posts are driven by algorithms that are promote this type of material online, and by the reduction in content moderation standards.

As a result, she said, citing research from the Antisemitism Policy Trust, there was a 115 per cent increase in the levels of antisemitic content on X between October 2023 and June 2024.

That research also showed the massively increased frequency of such posts – the organisation’s analysis estimates that there are now four antisemitic posts on Twitter in the UK per day per Jewish person in the UK (based on a population of about 290,000), up from two per year the previous year – a 760-fold increase.

“That's one million posts daily just on that platform alone. That's a pretty grim picture. It is very dark,” Baroness Berger said.

She added: “There is just such a breadth and depth of this very negative material which is harming our young people that I've increased my involvement and engagement, because it's so important that we do everything we possibly can to try and stem the tide.”

During Eden’s talk, the campaigner said she began raising awareness of the dangers of social media and smartphones after reading about 14-year-old Molly Russell, from Harrow, who died in 2017 from, a coroner ruled, “an act of self-harm whilst suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content”.

Eden also spoke of the “alarming and rising levels of depression and self-harm” that have emerged a decade the widespread use of smartphones and social media among children began to accelerate in around 2010.

Nova Eden spearheaded the Smartphone Free Childhood movement in north London[Missing Credit]

Eden added: “What we know is children are no longer outside, pursuing all the healthy activities they need for their healthy brain development, and instead they are spending hours alone on their devices. You can see that 15 to 24-year-old are really suffering [from a loss of] time with their friends, that face-to-face interaction which is what they need.”

Keen not to leave parents with a sense of despair, she presented practical ways in which to safely navigate the digital world and inspire family wellbeing and positive mental health in children. First and foremost, she stressed, was the importance of delaying giving children smartphones and social media for as long as possible. The Smartphone Free Childhood campaign advocates for no smartphones before the age of 14 and no social media before the age of 16, although Eden herself advocates age 16 for both.

“What age do you think play-based childhood should end?” she asked at the end of a powerful evening. “Because once they get that smartphone, they really don't want to play with Lego any more – that's it.”

The Jami guide Plugged In, Switched on: Raising Resilient Digital Natives (Guidance For Parents and Carers) can be found here Resources - Jami UK