Launching an all-out attack on social media giants as he accused them of doing “absolutely nothing” to enforce minimum age rules and hinted at new laws to make them mandatory.
In the interview with Parliament’s House magazine, he directly connected social media with the rise in mental health problems in children and young people.
He said: “It’s a combination of prevalence and people being more willing to talk about it. I definitely think social media has got a part to play.
“If you look at the figures, there’s an increase in self-harm amongst teenage girls but not amongst teenage boys.
“And that implies that something happened in the last decade to increase the pressure on teenage girls.”
He also hit out at the pressure on youngsters using networks like WhatsApp before turning 16 saying he “absolutely” backed a minimum and enforced legal age requirement to use the sites.
He raged: “The terms and conditions of the main social media sites are that you shouldn’t use it under the age of 13.
“But the companies do absolutely nothing to enforce against that. And they should, I think that should be a requirement.
“You shouldn’t be on WhatsApp, according to their own terms and conditions, before you’re 16.
“And yet, the pressures that people feel under when they’re on a WhatsApp group to respond, to wake up in the middle of the night to get back to messages – this is teenagers or young kids who aren’t even teenagers yet.
“So, if the company say that you shouldn’t be on it till 16, they should do something about that and they should empower parents to allow it to happen.”
He confirmed he had ordered the Chief Medical Officer to come forward with advice and guidance on the age-appropriate use of social media.
But he sat on the fence over whether social media networks should fork out to help fund child mental health services.
He added: “What I want to see is social media companies paying their fair share of tax and adequate funding for mental health services.
“Now, whether you link the two directly or not is less important than whether we get the funding into children’s mental health services.”
Previous Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt also hit out at social media giants for fuelling a rise in self harming among teenagers and allowing cyber bullying to flourish.
Teens are currently suffering record levels of anxiety.
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