Half of British 13-year-olds have watched a beheading video – and doctors just declared a public health emergency
Key Points
- Academy of Medical Royal Colleges submission to DSIT warns unregulated smartphone use among UK children should be treated as a public health emergency
- Half of UK 13 and 14-year-olds have watched a beheading video online, according to a Home Office psychiatrist cited in the submission
- 39% of GPs and 34% of clinicians more broadly are seeing children harmed by online content multiple times a week
- Frontline cases include child suicides, virtual suicide pacts, TikTok-guided overdoses and fatal injuries from replicating online sex acts
- UK now behind Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia, all of which are enforcing under-16 social media bans
Half of British 13 and 14-year-olds have watched a beheading video online.
The figure, revealed by a Home Office psychiatrist, appears in a new submission from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The Academy represents 22 royal colleges and tens of thousands of clinicians across the UK. Its evidence forms part of the government’s Growing up in the online world consultation.
The submission warns that unregulated smartphone access for children should be treated as a public health emergency.
Jeanette Dickson, Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, said the scale of harm now ranks alongside smoking and seatbelts as a unifying force for the medical profession. “We need to call this out unflinchingly rather than passively wait for someone else to prove causation,” said Dickson.
The Academy commissioned two clinician surveys to test the scale of the problem.
Among 132 GPs polled by the Royal College of General Practitioners, 39% reported seeing children harmed by screens and online content multiple times a week. A further 18% were seeing such cases weekly.
A parallel survey of 327 clinicians, including Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services staff, clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, found 34% seeing such cases multiple times a week and 20% weekly.
One GP described treating a child with bed sores caused by a social media addiction so severe she would not leave her bed.
A consultant psychiatrist reported a 14-year-old boy who had amputated his own finger and intended to go further.
A consultant paediatrician described a teenage girl who died in the Emergency Department after bleeding heavily during sex acts replicating online content involving knives.
One CAMHS crisis clinician’s caseload from the previous six months included a child who took their own life after viewing online content, a child who joined a virtual suicide pact with pupils from several other schools, and a child who overdosed after watching TikTok videos setting out drug quantities by body weight.
The Institute for Addressing Strangulation found in 2025 that 43% of 16 and 17-year-olds with prior sexual experience had been strangled during sex.
More than a mental health crisis
Ofcom data shows one in five children aged 3 to 5 in the UK already own a phone and more than a third use social media. The average age at which children first see pornography is 13, with 27% having seen it by age 11.
A senior optometrist told the roundtable that one in six UK children aged 12 to 13 are short-sighted, rising to more than one in four among 15 and 16-year-olds.
Dr Matthew Sadlier, President of the Irish Medical Organisation, said the algorithmic feedback loops driving online content are designed to be compulsive.
“If you go into a shop and you realise it’s not for you, you can leave. With social media it’s like there are these arms dragging you back to the content because you happened to look at something for a few seconds too long,” said Sadlier.
The Academy is calling for four immediate steps:
- Generic clinical guidance on spotting signs of unhealthy online relationships in children.
- Generic guidance on supporting families.
- Routine screening for online harms when taking patient histories.
- Direct engagement with social media companies to suppress inappropriate content reaching children.
Dr Lade Smith CBE, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said the true scale of the problem remains unknown because clinicians do not routinely collect the data. The UK already has the Online Safety Act 2023 in force, with Ofcom able to levy fines and block access.
The Academy’s submission shows Britain trailing Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia, all of which are actively enforcing under-16 social media bans. Greece, Spain, Austria and Portugal have announced similar measures.
“We said the same things about seatbelts. We said the same things about smoking. In both cases, the causal mechanism was hiding in plain sight, and the population paid the price while we didn’t pursue the argument robustly,” said Dickson.
