My opinion column was published in the Camden New Journal’s ‘Stop The Trolls’ special for International Women’s Day 2025.

IN the fruit aisle of my local supermarket last week, I smiled briefly at a lady I recognised from my children’s school.

As I picked out some plums, I saw that her face looked tear-stained and wondered if I should say something.

By the time that thought had caught up with me, she had disappeared, and I went to pay for my fruit.

As I was leaving, I noticed she was waiting outside and approached me tentatively.

She said she hoped I didn’t mind her asking but she really wanted to know how I handled online abuse as a woman in public life.

The question itself didn’t surprise me.

It’s a question I’ve encountered many times in 10 years of being an MP on panels and events and especially when I speak at school assemblies.

Statistics show that female MPs experience a disproportionate amount of online abuse.

My friend and colleague, Diane Abbott, the UK’s first black female MP, has been a particular victim of this.

She received nearly half of all the abusive tweets against women MPs before the 2017 general election – an average of 51 a day.

However, Diane is not the only victim.

On a single night in 2018, Jess Philips MP, received 600 rape threats.

I gave her my stock reply, that I never wasted my time reading online comments about myself and, more importantly, I have never worried about what keyboard warriors think of me.

She digested this for a minute before asking a follow-up question which did surprise me.

“Do you think your attitude to online abuse has been shaped by the fact that you didn’t have a smart phone growing up?”

I paused for a moment reflecting on what her question meant before she shared some statistics which had clearly been troubling her.

According to Girlguides, 60 per cent of girls aged between 11 – 21 worry about the impact on their mental health from being online and 54 per cent said fear of online abuse makes them feel less free to share their views.

Unsurprisingly 41 per cent said they often felt sad or depressed after spending time online or on social media.

Very sadly, her young daughter was suffering from anxiety and depression because of online bullying and social pressure but she felt helpless to prevent it.

Not least as she couldn’t relate to her daughter’s experience.

She wondered whether our generation (born in the early 1980s), were generally more thick-skinned or whether our attitudes to online commentary were simply different .

She said in her childhood, she never had to worry about the number of followers she had or the number of likes she got on her Instagram post because we didn’t have smart phones.

We didn’t need validation from random people online to feel content or popular.

Tik Tok for us was the sound of our alarm clocks.

After exchanging numbers and agreeing to continue this conversation, I started asking my friends anecdotally what their views were on the link between children’s mental health and social media.

Some said they had decided not to give their children access to social media until they were 16 even though it meant they were facing their children’s wrath.

Some cited research that indicated that the most dangerous age for children to have access to social media was between 11 and 16.

A local doctor who works in adolescent mental health said to me emphatically that she thinks in 20 years we will all look back on smartphones in the way that we now view cigarettes.

She said that in the past, cigarettes were given to army soldiers as it was believed it would alleviate stress for them and help them relaxed.

Society now looks back and realises how foolish this was and how detrimental it was to one’s health.

Smartphones could face a similar reckoning in the future, but it will be too late for this generation.

In Barnet, 103 primary schools have banned smartphones and 23 secondary schools have said they’ll commit to working towards removing smartphones entirely from the school day.

It’s not a silver bullet but it’s a start.

As my mind turned to International Women’s Day, I started thinking about how as a female MP (and a mother with young children), I need to play my part in ensuring future generations are protected from online harm especially for the sake of our young women.