‘It felt hypocritical’: child internet safety campaign accused of censoring teenagers’ speeches | Internet safety

An internet safety campaign backed by US tech companies has been accused of censoring two teenagers they invited to talk about the biggest problems children face online.

Childnet, a UK charity partly funded by companies including Snap, Roblox and Meta, edited Lewis Swire and Saamya Ghai’s warnings that social media addiction is “an imminent threat to our future” and that obsessive scrolling is making people “sick”, according to an editing recording seen by the Guardian.

Swire, then 17, from Edinburgh, and Ghai, then 14, from Buckinghamshire, had been asked to speak at an event in London to celebrate Safer Internet Day in 2024, in front of representatives from the government, charities and technology companies.

The tech-backed charity also removed references to children feeling unable to stop using TikTok and Snap, social media exacerbating a “devastating epidemic of isolation” and a passage questioning why people want to spend years of their lives “swiping TikTok and binge-watching Netflix”.

The 2026 iteration of the event, run by Childnet, will take place in more than 2,800 schools and colleges on Tuesday listed as supporters. Childnet, whose main aim is to “help make the internet a great and safe place for children”, is one of several internet safety charities partly funded by tech companies.

Childnet has denied regulating the technology to keep its funders happy and insisted it would not stop young people expressing their opinions. Some aspects of the confirmed conversation acknowledged that excessive screen time leads to depression and anxiety, and that social media companies should reduce the use of devices such as notifications, autoplay and banners to prolong user engagement.

But Swire said he felt “censored” by the way the charity handled his speeches.

The one-liner warned: “Young people are begging for a rope to pull them out of the quicksand” and described social media as “one of the worst psychological addictions in history.”

Another said: “Social media companies are in bed with the same psychology used to exploit gambling victims.” When Swire learned it was removed at the last minute, he wrote a similar line in his speech.

“I was quite surprised because I didn’t know there was a conflict of interest at this stage in terms of where the funding was coming from,” said Swire, who was then a member of Childnet’s youth advisory board. “I felt censored and almost betrayed by this organization that we wanted to represent with integrity. It was a pretty difficult experience.”

Ghai, now 16, said: “It was quite shocking because what they deleted brought to light a lot of things that were going on in the industry. It felt like hypocrisy because they were asking us to speak out against this situation and at the same time they watered down what we wanted to say.”

Swire said some of the interruptions were only apparent in the final paper copy of the speech they were given shortly before the speech began.

Will Gardner, Childnet’s CEO, has refused to make regulations that would make tech funders happy.

“If young people want to make a point, we allow them to make a point, but there are restrictions; it doesn’t depend on who pays us, it’s in the nature of the event we’re organizing and it’s time constraints,” he said. “We certainly advise and edit on tone and language, but we don’t stop young people from making a point.”

He said it was “not right” to regulate if proposed content jeopardized the charity’s relationship with social media company funders.

“I completely reject this,” he said. “We get some funding from tech companies because we work in online safety… but that doesn’t compromise our voice.”

Daisy Greenwell, co-founder of the Smartphone-Free Childhood campaign, said young people “should not be asked to censor themselves to protect Big Tech’s commercial interests.”

“Young people’s voices are often positioned as moral authority in discussions about online safety, but often these voices are only welcomed when they align with an organisation’s existing policy position,” he said. “When young people are filtered until they repeat a pre-approved phrase, that is not participation, it is concealment.”

Harry Amies, co-founder of Unplug.Scot, a network of parents in Scotland, said he was concerned about the impact of screens and education technology in classrooms: “Lewis’ evidence leaves us speechless. Many parents in the UK will be shocked to learn that Safer Internet Day is actually funded by Snapchat and other addictive social media platforms.”

Swire, now 19, is campaigning for a ban on social media for under-16s. In the original version of his speech, he said he felt “terrible” about spending 40 hours a week on social media, and said he wished he could stop but couldn’t because “I can’t delete TikTok because I make £10 a month on the app. I can’t delete Twitter because that’s where I get my football news. I can’t uninstall Snapchat because I’ll lose my streak.” This did not appear in the last speech.

Another segment cited research showing that “excessive social media consumption is worsening a devastating epidemic of loneliness.”