Dear Prime Minister

We are young people, youth organisations, and advocates from across the United Kingdom, writing with a shared concern about how decisions affecting our digital lives are being made.

We recognise and support the need to keep children and young people safe online. The impact of digital platforms on wellbeing, mental health, and development is real, and it deserves serious attention and action.

We welcomed the Growing Up in an Online World consultation and the growing national conversation around young people's experiences in digital spaces. For the first time, young people were invited to engage directly with the government on issues that shape their everyday lives. Thousands did so, sharing lived experiences, raising concerns, and proposing ideas for the future, through direct responses and events. Many of us engaged in good faith, believing our voices would meaningfully inform the final approach.

The recent announcement has left many of us feeling let down.

For many young people, social media is not simply a leisure activity, it is where they find community, access mental health support, discover opportunities, and hear from people who look and sound like them. Yet this policy was announced during the school run, through communications aimed squarely at parents, not at the young people it will affect most. Many found out from a news alert, a teacher, or a parent. For some, losing access to these platforms is not an inconvenience. It is the potential loss of a lifeline.

This was the second-largest public consultation in UK history. The largest, on equal marriage in 2014, took six months for the Government to review before acting. This announcement came barely three weeks after the consultation closed. That timeline sends a message, whether intended or not, that our voices have not been listened to.

The data reflects this. A recent survey by The Mix found that 71% of under-16s feel their voices are not being heard in the conversation around the proposed ban. Government research found that just 26% of young people feel their voice matters in decisions made across the country. The timing and manner of this announcement only deepens that sense of exclusion.

This comes after the Government has lowered the voting age to 16. When you are asking us as young people to engage in the democratic process, the message you are sending is contradictory.

This is not a letter about whether any single policy is right or wrong. It is about trust, transparency, and what meaningful participation actually looks like.

Young people are not simply users of technology. We are citizens whose lives are shaped by it every day. We bring expertise rooted in lived experience, and we are ready to contribute constructively to the solutions we all want to see. We also deserve greater transparency about how consultation responses are analysed and how they shape policy decisions, because trust is built through openness.

We are not asking to be agreed with on every point. We are asking to be genuinely included in the process.

You have indicated that a second wave of measures is coming in July. That is an opportunity. Our ask is simple: bring young people into the room. Not as an afterthought. Not as a consultation box to tick. As genuine partners in shaping the policies that will define their digital lives.

We are a generation with real expertise in our own lives. We hope you will meaningfully engage with us as such; not as subjects of policy, but as architects of it.