Outreach

Letters to Deputies, Education, and Health

Smartphone Free Childhood Guernsey (SFCG)

Guernsey

From: Smartphone Free Childhood Guernsey <sfcguernsey@gmail.com>

Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2026 9:37:11 PM

To: States Members Distribution Group 2025 <deputies2025@gov.gg>

Subject: Urgent action. Have you seen the news?

Dear Deputy

Children in Guernsey are being harmed. Right now. Today.

While you read this, a child on our island is being exposed to content that is destroying their mental health, warping their understanding of sex and relationships, and in some cases, could cost them their lives.

This is not scaremongering. This is the documented, clinical reality facing frontline healthcare professionals across the UK and Guernsey is not immune.

For some time now, SFCG has been raising these concerns locally. We have been told, more than once, that the evidence isn't strong enough to act. This month, the entire medical establishment of the United Kingdom disagreed with that position.

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges representing every branch of medicine from general practice to psychiatry, paediatrics to surgery has submitted a landmark report to the UK Government as part of its national consultation on children and the online world. Their conclusion is unambiguous: what is happening to children online is a public health emergency.

These are the clinicians treating children on the frontline, every single day. Their findings include:

• More than half of GPs are seeing children harmed by screens and devices every single week

• 13 is the average age a child first sees pornography - 59% of the time, by accident

• One in five children aged 3–5 in the UK already has their own phone

• A study of child suicides found that 29% mentioned online activity - yet barely a third of those children had their phones properly examined

• Each additional hour of daily social media use increases a child's risk of depression by 13%

• Problematic internet use is linked to a 72% increased risk of suicidal ideation

And this is what those same clinicians are documenting in their surgeries, wards and emergency departments:

• A teenage girl admitted to A&E after replicating something she had seen online. She died.

• A child who took an overdose after watching TikTok videos specifying which drugs to take, in what quantity, based on body weight

• A child who took their own life after viewing online content

• A 14-year-old who amputated his own finger, and intends to go further

• A child who joined a virtual suicide pact with children from multiple schools

• A 10-year-old so immersed in violent online content that he killed the family pet

We raise these cases not to shock, but because this is the reality that the medical profession is now demanding politicians confront. We also need you to understand something fundamental about why Guernsey cannot stand apart from this conversation:

The internet does not recognise geography.

The algorithm that pushes violent content to a child in Manchester pushes the same content to a child in St Peter Port. The pornography accessible to a 12-year-old in London is accessible to a 12-year-old in the Vale. The online spaces where children are groomed, radicalised, and drawn into self-harm do not pause at the harbour wall. The online world is not defined by borders  nd neither is the harm it causes.

Our children are not protected by the fact that we live on an island. They are growing up in the same unregulated digital world as every child the doctors in this report are describing.

These are not UK problems. They are our problems too.

Country after country is now acting. Australia has banned social media for under-16s. Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia have followed. France, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Greece and Austria are all moving to legislate. The UK's own Online Safety Act is in phased enforcement. The world is waking up. Yet we have done nothing. Or waiting for even more evidence.

We are asking you, as our elected representatives, to protect our children — and we are asking you to take it in two specific, immediate and entirely achievable ways:

1. Unified, Prevention-First Government Strategy

Formally recognise digital wellbeing as a top-tier, cross-committee safeguarding issue. This cannot sit with one committee or one Deputy. The harms cross every boundary,  health, education, home affairs, social care - and our response must do the same. We are calling for a unified, community-led prevention strategy that keeps pace with the fast-moving nature of digital risk and puts protection of children at its heart.

2. Smartphone-Free Schools

Implement a Bailiwick-wide policy banning smartphones from schools through to age 16. To be clear about what this means in practice: children would be permitted to carry a basic brick  phone, one that calls and texts - for safety and communication with parents. What would not be permitted on school premises is the internet-connected smartphone: the device that delivers social media, pornography, violent content and addictive algorithms directly into a child's pocket, all day, every day.

These are not the limit of what needs to happen. But they are where we start. They are what we are asking for today.

Our island is known for its community, its safety, and its quality of life. That is our USP. But our children are not safe - we are calling upon you to take action

Yours sincerely,

SFCG

Smartphone Free Childhood Guernsey