Stormont Education Minister ‘sympathetic’ to social media ban
Paul Givan said he supports the concerns behind such a ban but questioned how it could be enforced.
Northern Ireland’s Education Minister Paul Givan has said he is “sympathetic” to calls for a social media ban for young people.
UK ministers are consulting on whether to ban under-16s from social media after a similar move in Australia.
Mr Givan said he introduced a policy last year discouraging the use of smartphones during the school day at post-primaries.
There is also a phone-free pilot scheme running at nine schools which prevents accessing smartphones during the day by using lockable pouches.
Describing the “detrimental effect” of social media as a “distraction in school settings”, Mr Givan said he had been “leading in terms of those changes”.
“The ban on social media up to the age of 16 would take that a step further, we would need to look through how do you enforce that,” he told the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme.
“I’m a parent of teenage children, I understand, like many parents out there, the detrimental impact that social media is having.
“As England are looking at this, this is something that we have already talked about in Northern Ireland.
“It doesn’t strictly sit within my ministerial remit in terms of taking this policy forward, but I have every sympathy with the underlying concerns that are driving these proposals in England.”
