2026-04-17 11:02:51
Sir Keir Starmer has told tech bosses to change their approach to online child safety.
The UK Prime Minister has stressed to executives from companies like Meta, Snap, Google, TikTok and X that changes are needed, and that they need to improve their methods.
Starmer said: “The evidence is mounting and the status quo simply cannot be allowed to stand.
“It’s clear to me that parents aren’t asking us for tweaks at the edges, they’re asking us whether a system that clearly isn’t working for children should be allowed to continue at all.
“Companies have to grip this and work with us to do better by British children.”
Andy Burrows, the chief executive of Molly Rose Foundation, has welcomed the Prime Minister’s message. But he wants to see big tech companies make significant changes, rather than making empty promises.
He told the BBC: “Keir Starmer must turn his welcome rhetoric into action with a clear commitment in the King’s Speech to a new Online Safety Act that finally calls time on cavalier business models that put profit before safety.”
Professor Amy Orben, digital mental health expert at Cambridge University, thinks tech companies need to be held to account.
She said: “Social media companies’ increasingly powerful algorithms have caused concern across the population, with young people and parents telling us that they experience struggles to disengage from the online world.”
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