Two landmark rulings in the US this week dealt another hammer blow to the credibility of Big Tech’s claims that children’s safety is a priority for them.

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On Monday a jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million. This was after it was found that Mark Zuckerberg’s company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, put young users in harm’s way by exposing them to sexually explicit material and contact with dangerous adults.

Two days later Meta was back in the firing line, this time joined by Google, after a young woman sued them over her childhood addiction to social media and the damage it did to her mental health.

A jury in LA agreed with her, saying that Instagram and YouTube were negligent about the design of their platforms and, despite knowing they were addictive, failed to warn users of the harms of their products.

It’s a moment that echoes past reckonings from when the powerful tobacco industry was forced to confront the consequences of products they knew were dangerous.

Sadly, this is not news to many young people and parents.

But the cases have revealed new, damning documents underlining how the behemoths of Silicon Valley always knew their platforms were designed to hook in children while they hid behind their claims they were doing everything they could and their tokenistic changes.

Only last week NSPCC research revealed UK police forces are recording, on average, 100 child sexual abuse image crimes a day. Look a little further back and you will see online grooming offences against children are at record levels while AI-generated child sexual abuse material continues to accelerate upwards at a shocking rate.

This is now a massive test for our Prime Minister and his Government.

The question now is whether Government will stand up to tech companies?

An Australia-style social media ban for under-16s is what many are calling for. This is totally understandable and the NSPCC has been clear this is a better option than sticking with the status quo.

However, we strongly believe we should go further to ensure we have a much stronger system of protection. We have to be braver and bolder to deliver the comprehensive online safety children need and deserve and parents’ demand.

That is why we’re urging the Government to force tech companies to deliver three key actions when their public consultation concludes in May.

First tech companies must - prove their services are safe and age appropriate before children can use them. Dangerous features must be switched off and algorithms remodelled.

And the protections must be watertight – otherwise Big Tech should be banned from offering services to our children.

No other companies or manufacturers who make products for children are allowed to knowingly market or sell harmful things to them – why should tech companies be the exception?

Second. they must build safety into every device, platform and AI tool so children do not see harmful or illegal content, including the creation, sharing and storing of nudes.

Getting to grips with social media is crucial but we cannot let this blind us to the other dangers children now face on technology like AI chatbots, gaming platforms and on their devices.

Making sure that – straight out of the box – devices can be set up with built in protection for children and young people would go a long way to stopping some of the harms. The technical solutions exist to do this and they should be mandatory.

Finally, the Government must ban the use of addictive design tricks which keep children gaming, scrolling and watching for hours on end.

For too long products have been engineered with one goal in mind: keeping children endlessly hooked.

The lawsuit in LA against Meta and Google makes unmistakably clear that Big Tech has long known about the addictive risks built into their platforms—and yet chose to do nothing.

Their inaction isn’t a failure of understanding; it’s a failure of responsibility. In some ways this may be the hardest of our calls to action for Silicon Valley to stomach.

However, it is also what is stealing countless childhoods and leaving parents in despair as they wage an endless war to stop their loved ones from unhealthy and addictive use of their devices.

History is now watching.

It took Governments and regulators years to stand up to tobacco companies.

Will our political leaders now learn from this, step up and seize the moment and tackle this head on? Or will they duck the difficult decisions?

This week’s court decisions in the US have helped expose the reality of what is happening on these platforms – now we need action in the UK to ensure tech companies can’t get away with harming our children any longer.

Chris Sherwood is the CEO of the NSPCC.

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