Mother of boy who may have died in TikTok challenge urges No 10 to ban social media

The mother of a teenager who believes he died in a TikTok challenge gone wrong has said that Downing Street has been too slow to move towards a social media ban for under-16s, and accused the government of “kicking it down the road”.

Ellen Roome, the mother of Jools Sweeney, 14, is among the families who will meet Keir Starmer on Tuesday as a consultation into the social media ban closes this week.

“Come on, get a grip, let’s actually stand up, do something, make a decision,” she said on Today on BBC Radio 4. “I don’t care if they take it away for adults and children until it’s safe, just take it away, fix it, and then we can give it back.”

Roome said she hoped a ban would give technology companies the impetus to make the platforms safer. “They spend millions and billions of pounds on making their system. They could spend some money on actually fixing their system and say this is now a safe product, and give it back. But until it’s safe, I absolutely wholeheartedly say take it away.”

Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, said the government would “seize this moment” but said it was right there had been time taken on the consultation.

“We need to make sure that legislation and protection keeps pace with technology as it changes and protects our children going forward,” she added. “We’ve got legislation in place already to enable us to take these powers, so we’ll be acting as soon as possible because we need to make sure we protect children going forward and we get this right.”

The former health secretary Wes Streeting, who compared social media to tobacco in a Guardian interview on Monday, told Today that the tech companies were to blame for making their products so addictive.

“They know that it is harmful, and the business model is orientated towards getting kids, while they’re young, addicting them with the design features that are designed for addiction to grab your attention and keep you on their platform for as long as possible,” he said.

He said there was “a growing body of evidence about the impact of this technology on childhood, whether that is sleep, concentration, learning, health, wellbeing, including mental health, the harms are evidence, and the precautionary principle should apply here.”

Streeting said he had constantly urged stronger action behind closed doors while he was in cabinet. “I’m liberated from the obligations of collective responsibility, which is means I can now say publicly what I think,” he said.

“I made the same arguments inside government, I made them in cabinet, I made them in a number of cabinet committees and meetings where we were discussing issues surrounding education and wellbeing, but also violence against women and girls, where I think again we’ve got serious patterns of grooming and harmful behaviour.”