Martin Lewis demands 'national curfew' on social media for people born in these years
Martin Lewis is calling for a national curfew in a radical new policy
Money expert Martin Lewis is calling for a national curfew on social media apps for people born in these years.
The money guru and dad to daughter Sapphire, 11, is calling for a change to social media rules to block children from being able to use the apps after 9pm.
Speaking on his latest BBC Sounds podcast, Martin spoke about the worry over children accessing social media apps like TikTok, and says he doesn’t allow his own daughter to use the app.
Martin said that when he was growing up, TV was the biggest form of media and there were rules - which still exist today - governing the time children were allowed to watch TV programmes, even if those rules are less relevant in the age of streaming services.
Martin explained the worry, and set out a system which would mean people born between 2009 and 2024 would not be allowed to access social media after 9pm in a national curfew.
He said: “I know from friends and I’ve seen it myself, people who have messaging apps when they’ve got young children and they’re still beeping at 11 o’clock at night.
“So actually I think there’s something that we could do, we could say that there’s a national convention that says, the watershed is, well let’s say 9pm for ease. After 9pm children under 16 should not be on messaging apps, they should not be using social media. I think that would be healthy.
“Well of course, people will say ‘yeah they’re never gonna do it’ but it’s not about that. This is what you call a friction policy. And a lot of the stuff I do with money and the Mental Health Policy Institute which I chair, friction policies that put a blocker that make it more difficult, that can be useful so that as a parent, when your child says ‘but my friends are doing it’ you say, no, the rules are 9pm and we’re sticking to the rules and if they choose not to, these are the rules, and it gives parents an extra tool in the arsenal.
“I think reversing the social media genie is very difficult but we can start to have some conventions which may well help.”
