“We can do this the easy way or the hard way”.

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The strength of this message is its simplicity. It’s the iron fist in a velvet glove approach to changing a behaviour or an outcome. Something has to change one way or another, the question is only how and by when?

When MPs gather today to debate amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, they will be asked to decide how best to tackle the pervasive and pernicious problem of social media’s exploitation of our children.

It’s widely accepted, save perhaps among a few free market absolutists and tech sector apologists, that the unimaginably successful social media and gaming platforms that have been recording, analysing and monetising the lives of billions of people have also been corroding our children’s minds and childhoods, sapping their intellectual capacity and damaging their life chances.

These platforms may not be the root cause of all of the ills of the world encountered by children. But parents, GPs, teachers, speech and language therapists, child psychologists, young adults, and even children themselves see with their own eyes the carnage being wrought in bedrooms, living rooms, classrooms and playgrounds.

We don’t need a lofty panel of academics to complete a two-year field study to know what the social media companies have themselves acknowledged: these platforms are precision engineered to be addictive (though they call it ‘maximising engagement’) and they are certainly not designed to be safe for children.

We may hear one or two MPs question whether correlation equals causation, or warn that bold action to protect all children from harm and exploitation might inadvertently disadvantage the experiences of a few special interest groups.

The vast majority, though, are as human as the rest of us, many of them parents, and they know in their hearts that this is a serious problem that must be tackled quickly and decisively. The question is not whether, but how and by when.

The choice for MPs is simple: vote to support the proposal already approved by a cross-party majority in the House of Lords and supported by at least 75% of the public (and 60% of 16 to 24 year olds). Or they can instead support the Government’s counter-proposal.

The former requires the Government to take decisive action against harmful social media and gaming platforms within twelve months.

The message for the platform operators will be simple: it’s the easy way or the hard way. Twelve months to clean up your act, or under-16s will be off limits.

Children account for roughly 25% of the market for these companies, so this measure will create a huge incentive for platforms to design child-appropriate services, capturing the market share vacated by their child-inappropriate competitors.

The Government’s amendment will create no such incentives. It’s a ‘blank cheque’ proposal, revealing no details about the measures that might be introduced, or when they might be introduced.

It will give Ministers an option, but no obligation, to make new laws at a time of their choosing, including never. In principle, this could go as far as keeping children away from harmful platforms, but it could equally be used to fob us off with half-measures, such as more ineffective parental controls, curfews or daily time limits.

It’s the equivalent of saying to the tech bros “pull your socks up, or by golly we might decide to do something about it…”. We’ve tried that already. It hasn’t worked.

The clearest message that MPs can deliver to the social media and gaming platforms that have harvested mountains of money on the backs of millions of childhoods is the simplest: the easy way or the hard way, which will it be?

Ben Kingsley is Legal Director for the www.SafeScreens.org campaign.

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