Labour jobs tsar Alan Milburn warns social media is destroying lives | Politics | News
Young people should be removed from social media and made to perform national services so that they can put down their phones and return to work. Speaking at the launch of a report into what is driving youth unemployment in the UK, former health secretary Alan Milburn said he was alarmed by the large number of young people not getting enough kip because they were too busy “doomscrolling” on their phones.
Responding to a question about whether military and civilian national services would be brought back, he told reporters that such opportunities could mean “different types of service”, including “volunteering”. The 68-year-old politician also said that the increase in mental health problems such as anxiety is among the reasons why young people have difficulty entering employment.
Signaling that he would support a social media ban on children, he continued: “We really need to look at this. The government is looking at this.”
“If the government hasn’t made a statement about this when I come to report in the autumn, I certainly will.”
The government is consulting on a possible ban but stops short of saying whether the Prime Minister supports it.
Mr Milburn warned that a growing sense of anxiety in young people was distracting them from work.
He said: “This is an anxious generation for a wide variety of reasons; it’s a world full of uncertainty, opportunities as defined are lower. “They live in the digital age.
“I have a small team that travels around the country and they talk to these young people, these Neet young people, and they do this exercise and ask them what time you went to sleep last night.
“2 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 4 o’clock, 5 o’clock, sometimes never. This is a generation that is moving towards the apocalypse with their phones in their bedrooms.”
The report highlights that almost half of young people reporting as NEET say they have a disability or special educational needs, which prevents them from working.
This is almost double what it was in 2013/14.
