On Monday, the House of Lords threatened to derail the government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill by reintroducing an amendment which would ban social media for the under-16s. The Commons will vote on amendments today.

This is the third time that the Lords have attempted to force this amendment into the legislation. On each occasion that it has been added, the government has whipped its MPs to reject the amendment. The Prime Minister wishes to delay the implementation of a social media ban until a consultation that he commissioned into online harms for teenagers concludes this summer.

Perhaps the reason advocates want to rush this legislation through is that if they wait any longer, the evidence coming out of Australia – that these bans do not work – will become so overwhelming that they will have missed their chance.  

The first study which has been........

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