Miriam Cates has called for under-16s to be banned from using smartphones as she claimed: "If they were a drug, phones would be removed from the market."
Speaking to GB News the Conservative MP explained that "smartphones and social media are causing irreparable damage to childhood".
She said: "Whatever measure you look at, whether it's increasing suicides, self-harm, rising anxiety and depression, children feeling that their lives are lonely or not worth living.
"All these things have rocketed since smartphones and social media became widely adopted by children from 2014 onwards.
"And so I think there's there's growing consensus that more needs to be done by the Government.
"Certainly, if social media and smartphones were a drug they would be withdrawn from the market.
"They've never been shown to be safe to children. They were never designed for children. And yet somehow we're allowing these enormous tech companies constant access into our children's lives through the digital world."
