Stop sending children social media notifications during the night, says privacy expert

Social media firms must stop pestering children by sending them mobile phone notifications in the middle of the night, a leading privacy expert has said. 

Speaking at an event organised by Telegraph Technology Intelligence on Thursday, Jenny Afia, a partner at law firm Schillings, said it was "bonkers that children are treated exactly the same online as adults are". 

Under new laws social media firms will have to use "age-appropriate design" for users who are children to ensure that their experience is tailored to their age group. 

The nature of the new regulations is set to be decided by the information commissioner but are likely to include making privacy settings on children's accounts as high as possible by default and ensuring terms and conditions are written in accessible language for young users. 

Ms Afia, who is a member of the Children’s Commissioner’s task force on growing up in the digital age, said the rules should also restrict the hours when social media companies are allowed to send push notifications to young users. 

"Children, 13-year-olds, shouldn't be getting notifications at 1am when they should be asleep - children need 10 hours of sleep per night. 

"And we know how much these companies know about all of us. 

"So they know full well that it's a child who's receiving a notification at this point and notifications don't happen in real time - the algorithm keeps them back to know when is a good time to send the notification to suck us back in and to suck our children back in and capture their attention and their data," she said. 

She added that "attention traps", such as autoplaying videos and an artificial delay when the user refreshes a social media page, should not be used on children's accounts. 

"Tech companies need to really take responsibility and get to the root of the problem," she said. 

At the same session Tom Fogden, co-founder of Ada, the National College for Digital Skills in Tottenham, said it was "unrealistic" to expect students to be apart from their phones during lessons.

"It's what they use in their day-to-day life, it's what they will use as adults in the workplace," he said. "To remove all those things is unrealistic."