Facebook should require parents to confirm their children are over the age of 13, Matt Hancock suggests

Facebook and other social media websites should require parents to confirm that their children are over the age of 13 before they are allowed to use the websites.

Matt Hancock, the Culture Secretary, criticised social media websites for only requiring children to tick a box to confirm that they are over the age of 13. 

He said that social media means it is "one of the hardest times to be a parent", with children using new technology that "we couldn't have dreamed of" a generation ago. 

The Government is also considering imposing strict time limits that will cut off teenager from social media sites after a few hours browsing.

The minimum age for Facebook users is 13, but surveys suggest that three-quarters of children aged between 10 and 12 have social media accounts.

Mr Hancock told Peston on Sunday: "My instinct there is that is that parental controls don’t work unless they have a strong backstop behind them. 

"So for instance on this question of children saying they are 13, ticking the box to say that they are old enough to go on these social media platforms when in fact they are not... how you ensure that a child really is 13 is hard. Before the age of 18 there aren’t these sorts of legal documentation and we don’t have ID cards in this country."

He added: "I think this is one of the hardest times to be a parent. This new technology has come and made changes to childhood that we couldn’t have dreamed of when we were growing up even just a generation ago."

He admitted that the Government does not have the power it needs over social media companies after 10 firms snubbed his invitation for talks.

The 14 largest companies were invited to a meeting with the Cabinet minister but just four attended.

He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "One of the problems we have got is that we engage with Facebook, Google and Twitter and they get all of the press, they get all of the complaints in the public debate but there's now actually a far greater number of social media platforms like musical.ly.

"They didn't show up and the companies have now got over a million on their site."

Told the failure of the companies to show up to the meeting, along with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's refusal to appear before MPs showed Britain did not have the power it needed, he replied: "I very much agree with you and that's one of the reasons we are legislating. "The fact that only four companies turned up when I invited the 14 biggest in gave me a big impetus to drive this proposal to legislate through."