First Minister’s Question Time – in the Scottish Parliament am ar 26 Medi 2024.
What is the Scottish Government’s reaction to the findings in a new study by the World Health Organization that Scottish 13-year-old girls are displaying addictive behaviours towards social media, and that boys of the same age are showing the highest levels of daily gaming? How does the Government plan to manage that potentially dangerous and damaging behaviour?
That is a serious issue. As the father of a 13-year-old, I wrestle with those challenges constantly. I say that in all seriousness, given the degree of young people’s focus on social media.
We must encourage young people to see social media activity in perspective with the rest of their activities, so encouraging healthy, active lifestyles is important, too. Next week is Scottish women and girls in sport week, and the Government is engaged in a lot of promotional work to encourage more participation and engagement in sporting activity by women and girls. Next week, I will visit UHI Perth in Perth city to support some of that work.
We must encourage the raising of awareness of the dangers of social media and its overuse. Parliament has already discussed some of the very acute dangers. For example, some months ago, Evelyn Tweed put a question to me about the tragic case in Dunblane. We must ensure that there is wide understanding of the difficulties and challenges that can arise from overuse of social media.