Is this the end of social media for teenagers?
Electoral Dysfunction
Sky News
4.4 • 764 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Should social media be banned for under 16s? After a dramatic vote in the House of Lords, Beth, Harriet and Ruth dig into what a ban would really mean and what impact it will have on young people, and they hear from some of them.
And on the world stage, Donald Trump’s threats over Greenland and tariffs have rattled allies and forced an uncomfortable reckoning about the strength of the transatlantic relationship. With Davos dominated by power plays and a hard-hitting speech from Canada’s Mark Carney, the trio ask whether the rules-based world order is already breaking, and where that leaves Britain.
You can WhatsApp the podcast at 07934 200 444 or email electoraldysfunction@sky.uk.
Remember, you can also watch Beth, Harriet and Ruth on YouTube.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Sky News, the full story first. |
| 0:10.3 | Hello and welcome to electoral dysfunction with me, Beth Rigby, me Ruth Davidson and me, Harriet Harmon. |
| 0:20.9 | It's another week, it's another government reset that didn't quite go to plan again because of Donald Trump again. |
| 0:28.8 | I was meant to be going up to Yorkshire with the Prime Minister on Monday. |
| 0:33.0 | He was going to do a big speech on the cost of living. |
| 0:36.1 | We've talked about this as being the thing that |
| 0:38.2 | the government want to get onto. But come Sunday morning, well, that was shelved because of this |
| 0:45.2 | Trump tweet insisting he was going to take Greenland and slap a load of tariffs on the UK. |
| 0:52.7 | It was a full-blown crisis. So that was all shelved. But Harriet, |
| 0:57.5 | you've had a little mini reset of your own, haven't you, this week? I've been channeling you, |
| 1:02.2 | Beth, because you kind of go abroad, go to lots of different countries, get off the plane, |
| 1:06.3 | come straight into the studio. And I have done that today. And I've had to slightly reset my |
| 1:10.7 | hair and face to come into the pod today. have done that today and I've had to slightly reset my hair and face to |
| 1:12.0 | come into the pod today because what I was doing I was in over four days in three Gulf |
| 1:18.0 | States, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi talking to women out there about the absolute |
| 1:24.4 | massive change in their lives. I mean, it is absolutely amazing the sort of difference in the lives that women are there leading |
| 1:31.2 | compared to their mothers and their grandmothers. |
| 1:33.9 | But what were they also talking about is social media and their concerns of the threats that there are to them on social media |
| 1:40.9 | and also, you know, threats to their children in a situation where there's |
| 1:45.0 | much, much more control of communications and social media, but still it is an issue. So it's, |
| 1:52.4 | we're going to be talking about it, but it's not just us talking about it. It's a global issue. |
| 1:56.3 | You just said that you reset your hair and face. It doesn't look like it because fresh as a daisy, |
... |
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