Keir Starmer tells MPs he is open to social media ban for young people | Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer has told MPs he is open to the idea of an Australian-style ban on social media for young people after becoming concerned about the amount of time children and teenagers are spending on their phones.

The prime minister told Labour MPs on Monday evening he had become alarmed at reports about five-year-olds spending hours in front of screens each day, as well as increasingly worried about the damage social media is doing to under-16s.

Starmer has previously opposed banning social media for children, believing such a move would be difficult to police and could push teenagers towards the dark web.

However with cross-party political support growing for such a ban, the prime minister told a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party that he had shifted his position.

“We are looking at Australia, there are different ways you can enforce it,” he told the meeting.

He also addressed the use of phones during school time, adding: “No one thinks you should have phones in schools.”

One minister who attended the meeting said: “It was definitely a change in tone and I think a lot of colleagues will have welcomed it. Keir gave the impression that all options are on the table.”

Last year ministers opposed measures in a private member’s bill by the Labour MP Josh MacAlister which would have forced social media companies to exclude young teenagers from algorithms in an attempt to make their platforms less addictive.

It would also have committed the government to a review of the sale of phones to teenagers and whether additional technological safeguards should be on phones sold to under-16s.

Since then however, Australia has put its own ban in place, while support has grown across Westminster for such a move in the UK.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said over the weekend that the Tories would stop under-16s from accessing “addictive” social media, while Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, said he wanted a “cross-party consensus around much bolder action”.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, said he was also open to a social media ban for young people, saying: “Let’s see the Australian experiment, let’s see how it works and let’s make our minds up.”

Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, echoed that statement on Tuesday, telling a press conference: “We need to study what’s happened in Australia, this is absolutely the direction of travel.”

Officials say Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, is also open to the idea of a ban, with a final decision expected within months.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, told the BBC last week: “I think the drivers behind Australia’s decision are things we’re worried about here in the UK – whether that’s cyberbullying, whether that’s things like body image and eating disorders and mental ill health, whether that’s the risk of grooming, the risk of people also being groomed into terrorism and serious organised crime, so the dark side of the internet.”