Keir Starmer says UK must ‘tackle’ social media infinite scrolling

LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday said the government “need to look at” social media design features like infinite scroll as part of action to encourage healthier habits for children online.

Speaking at an event on Monday morning, Starmer said he was concerned that even exposure to ostensibly non-harmful online content could be problematic for kids’ development.

The U.K. government is due to launch a consultation in the next few weeks into children’s online safety which will specifically consider whether to ban under-16s from social media. The government on Monday announced it would give itself powers to swiftly enact findings from that consultation, which will last three months.

Starmer said that “there will be action coming out of this consultation,” even if that’s not an outright ban, and suggested that specific features including infinite scrolling and autoplay could be targeted.

“Some of the addictive features on social media that mean you never stop scrolling, or once you want watch one thing, another thing comes up and you’re on your screen the whole time, we need to look at that, because even if it’s good stuff, the question is, how do we get people off it and not simply on their screen?” Starmer said.

He reiterated the point in an interview with Radio 2.

“Yes, there’s the sort of overarching question of whether under 16 should be on social media at all … There are features within social media that are intended to make it addictive, so the sort of constant scrolling, the sort of auto player for next thing … all of these are designed to keep young people on-screen, not off-screen. And we have to tackle that,” Starmer said.

This comes after the European Commission made a preliminary finding earlier this month that TikTok’s infinite scroll and autoplay features breached Europe’s Digital Services Act.