Maybe it’s time for an overnight social media ban for the over-50s - Susan Dalgety

If the plan goes ahead it will mean that apps such as Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube will have a default “unavailable” setting between midnight and 6am for this age group.

I have no wish to be flippant, as I know how harmful social media can be to vulnerable adolescents and I agree that there needs to be a proper plan agreed with the big tech companies to protect young people, but a curfew won’t work.

As one analyst told the BBC, the curfew is nothing more than a “mildly annoying settings prompt with a government press release attached.”

I hope whoever our new PM choses as his Technology Secretary will come up with something more considered than the current proposals, which also include a total social media ban for under 16s.

And while they are about it, they might want to consider ways of getting us older folk off social media. I go to my bed early most nights, but am still wide awake at midnight, watching Instagram and Facebook reels about cats, Greece and anything else my algorithms throw up.

And when I am not learning how to cook spanakopita like Maria’s yia-yia (Greek for granny), or aghast at “Zara death pants” allegedly the world’s most ‘dangerous’ trousers, I am over on my spiritual home X/Twitter, gossiping with like-minded people about the state of the world.

Even when I invariably wake at 3am for a comfort break, I reach from my phone to check my feed before trying to fall back asleep.

Objectively I know that I am addicted, but social media has become so much part of my personal and working life that I can’t bear to give it up, even for a few short hours in the middle of night.

And from exchanges I have had with the people of my vintage, still wide awake at 4.30am, I know I am not alone. Perhaps what’s really needed is a curfew for the over-50s?