Technology, young people and mental health (RCPsych Congress 2026)

Yeah, and we should also talk about the tech companies and their influence over research, because there have been reports that social media companies may have downplayed or concealed evidence of harm for high-profile court cases in America.

How much do corporate interests impact on our understanding of these issues?

It's just massive, isn't it? These devices, these platforms were devised with commercial interest in mind.

So their entire functioning, their design, is to drive commercial interest.

It's not what we would call safety by design.

Safety was never a consideration.

They've never been regulated and had to prove safety.

So their sole function is to increase profits for their shareholders.

And that's very apparent.

So I don't personally understand why we have these massive tech geniuses across the platform.

It obviously worked out very easily how to monetize their platforms and how to engage people, keep them online, keep them addicted.

increase the number of people coming onto their platforms.

Why can't you just flip that around? Surely you can just build platforms with safety in mind and just flip all the mechanisms that they're currently using to keep people engaged and stay online to make it easier for people to make those choices themselves rather than be exposed to infinite scrolling and notifications, etc.

So again, we called before for safety by design, safety first.

Not much evidence that's been happening over the years.

Despite the online safety bill, which obviously has been a positive development, many people are concerned that it hasn't shown teeth, as it were.

It has prosecuted a few companies.

But practically, in the real world, we can't really see much difference in terms of what's happening to children and young people online.

If anything...

It was quite horrifying, really, when we reflected on what's changed over the past five years, over the past 10 years, when we first started this work.

And the current landscape online, there's absolutely no relationship talks going on 10 years ago.

And I think we're all very aware of that.

For example, AI chatbots is something that we haven't had to cover in this report, but there's so many new developments happening at pace.

Yes, because we hear anecdotally that many young people are turning to AI tools and chatbots for support rather than professionals or even friends or family.

I think that the term is that AI is hacking attachment where social media used to hack attention.