I will move to the next item, which is the short debate. And if I may ask Bethan Sayed to introduce the short debate—Bethan Sayed. 

Thank you, and I've given a minute to Jack Sargeant and to Lynne Neagle. I wanted to raise this debate to explore how—[Interruption.] 

If you could leave the Chamber quietly. Thank you. Bethan Sayed. 

I wanted to raise the debate to explore how true we are to our own lives in how we operate online, and whether it's harming us at all. Now, growing up in the south Wales Valleys and, believe it or not, it was before the time of the internet taking hold, I didn't have these types of influences online, but I certainly had them in magazines. In my mid twenties, I stopped buying many of the magazines for women because I was constantly being told what I should and shouldn't wear, what I should look like and what diet I should be on, and it gave me massive anxiety problems. But then, that didn't really help, because I stopped buying the magazine but then, obviously, our lives transformed online. So, all these types of diets and images transferred online and started following me to Instagram and to social media.

And so, I found myself in the same position that I was in growing up as I do now, that sometimes you do question your self-esteem and your body confidence because of the things that you see online. And if I feel like that as a 37-year-old woman, then what do our young people growing up feel like when they're constantly bombarded with these images? They feel pressurised, anxious, isolated. That may not reflect at all on their Snapchat filters, of course, but that is genuinely how they feel because they tell me on a daily basis. 

Now, I do a lot of work with people with eating disorders, and James Downs, who's an amazing mental health campaigner who had an eating disorder himself told me, 'These are more than pictures. They are telling us that looking a certain way is associated with success, sex appeal, wealth, glamour and popularity. Such pictures and messages aren't all that easy to dismiss. We're encouraged to think that we must look this way, and if we're not, we are not good enough. I have experienced an eating disorder for more than half of my life, and a big part of coming to terms with my body as it is has been learning that these images of perfection are just not realistic'.

Some aspects of what we see online can be viewed with a clear sense of bemusement. Not everything we see online is accepted as read and aspired to. There are some truly bizarre fashion and body image trends, and standards of beauty that I'm sure most people know they shouldn't follow at all—the finger-trap test, for example. This became a viral sensation on Chinese social media as a test to check whether someone is classically considered to have beauty. You simply place the top of your index finger against the tip of your nose and chin, and if your lips touch your finger, congratulations, you're beautiful, apparently. If not, then we are all doomed.

How about the 'thighbrow'? The Kardashians, the Jenners, Amber Rose and others have become hugely famous for having these allegedly beautiful curvaceous bodies. The 'thighbrow' is having a line where softer skin folds at the top of your thigh. I'm not going to do this one today, by the way. [Laughter.] If this happens then, presumably, you aren't too thin and just have the right amount of curves in the right places, and I find that truly incredible. 

Well, how about Barbie feet? The term coined by fashion website Who What Wear is where women, mostly in bikinis, post pictures of themselves standing on the balls of their feet and pointing their toes—and, again, I'm not going to try this—just like shoeless Barbies. Why? So, they can mimic the elongating and slimming effects of heels. Apparently, wearing flip-flops to the beach is out of fashion. 

Suzy Davies took the Chair.

So, we can shake our heads and grin at some of this, but we know how easy it is to get taken into and get sucked up in what we should and shouldn't look like or what trend we should or shouldn't embrace. Now, come on, how many of us have felt a sense of satisfaction after getting a certain amount of likes or affirmations after posting a selfie or a new profile picture online? Let's be honest about it. Sometimes it's entirely harmless, but it can also be symptomatic of a damaging culture of unrealistic body aspiration, which is becoming harmful.

And it's not just damaging to women. If a man joins a gym, then it's no coincidence that the person will then be targeted with ads on Facebook or Instagram advertising every kind of workout imaginable, often promoting standards of beauty that are just as much a fantasy for many men as the perfect bikini body is to women. Men, particularly young men, are often under similar pressure to look a specific way. A man should have a full head of thick hair, despite the fact that the vast majority of men will experience some form of hair loss during their lifetime, with a large percentage losing their hair before the age of 40. This can have a profoundly destabilising mental effect on men but it is perfectly normal. Men should have perfect abs; a nice tan, but, like women, not too much; a sleeve tattoo, maybe; a beard; as little body hair as possible, or if there is going to be chest hair, trimmed and groomed, just in that specific way that social media allows it to be.

Muscles too—men's obsession with having muscles has become enormous thanks to the growth of social media and reality tv shows. There is a growing and worrying rise of steroid use, particularly in places like south Wales. In fact, one expert last year called the growing rise of steroid use amongst men in Wales a time-bomb for the Welsh NHS, with him projecting that in 20 years' time, maybe less, GPs will see an increase in the number of 40 to 50-year-old men with a history of using steroids with liver, thyroid and kidney problems or heart conditions. 

For years, women and increasingly men have turned to cosmetic procedures, often dangerous, to alter parts of their bodies. Some have now become so routine and an accepted part of our culture that it's not even debated, questioned or an eyebrow raised if a woman pays thousands of pounds for this type of procedure. Now, I understand that it's mostly become normalised and, of course, the vast majority of operations are conducted safely. But let's ask why many people are having these operations in the first instance. Many celebrities have had said operations only to reverse them down the line when they realise that it is damaging for their bodies. The breadth of this problem, encouraged and amplified online, I believe, is difficult to ignore. It has become a pervasive part of our everyday lives, whether we sometimes realise it or not. and even if we do realise what's going on, does it stop us from being influenced by it? 

In 2016, the Dove Global Beauty and Confidence campaign reported that body image and confidence was at a crucially bad stage. More women felt unconfident or disliked their bodies than ever before. It found in the UK that only 20 per cent had self-esteem in the way that they looked. In Austrailia, it was found that a shocking 89 per cent of women admitted to cancelling plans, engagements and even job interviews because of worries about how they looked. Now, this is not an abstract series of statistics. This has very real-world consequences. When people are bombarded by adverts, images, influencers, articles on a daily basis that try to tell them in an explicit or an implicit way that they aren't good enough and that their self-worth will improve if they alter, or work to alter, aspects of their appearance, then it will naturally take a toll on our mental health.

There's also an impact on how some people, specifically younger people and children, react to others. The Nuffield Trust has said that in February 2018, 55 per cent of girls had been bullied about their appearance and although there is an impact that crosses gender lines, it's clear that girls are affected more than boys, with an unprecedented toll on their mental health. Childline reported that 2,000 girls were given body image counselling sessions. That is, sadly, probably only a fraction of what is needed and is why in the past I have campaigned for well-being and confidence lessons in our schools to try and get to grips with some of these real-life problems. 

But it isn't just about the way we look. Our online lives can be markedly different from our realities. Online influencers can encourage people of any age into following patterns or aspiring to things that are sometimes unrealistic. We know as politicians all too well how online influencers can distort. Let's be honest: how many of us have had conversations online with people believing in things or referencing online material that we know is wholly and completely false? I've talked about the rise of fake news here before, and what might be surprising is that most fake news, fake articles and false images are shared by older people. We have a growing crisis, fuelled online, of men joining right-wing groups and chat rooms, where anti-women, racist and violent rhetoric and false news are shared and encouraged. Words like 'cuck' are thrown around to refer to men who they believe do not live up to traditional standards of masculinity. Online influencers reacting against changing gender roles or the loss of traditional roles fuel what we now call 'toxic masculinity'. Online imagery and language and clickbait articles fuel generational battles, with terms such as 'snowflake' and 'gammon' being traded back and forth.

Constant images of a particular kind of ideal lifestyle cause families to fall into debt. We've all seen the Facebook posts of people lining up Christmas presents to show how much they've spent on little Johnny this Christmas and how some people feel pressurised when they see those pictures. Recently, a 14-year-old girl took her own life on Facebook Live, a new low in a worrying trend of how being online can impact us all.

There needs to be a conversation throughout society about the impact of social media on our lives. We should, of course, recognise the positive impacts, the sense of community we can sometimes have in having those political conversations and creating new alliances; we just wouldn't have had them before. But, also it has made us more fractured as a society, more lonely and more disenfranchised in many areas of our lives, especially in relation to mental health. So, how do we do this without preaching to others? Because, of course, we spend a lot of our time online, and I would say to us that we need to try to take ourselves offline more and to have more real interactions. Many of us attended the funeral of Steffan Lewis last week, and what I've said to myself ever since his passing is, 'Do you know what? We have to have those real live interactions. We have to spend more time with the people who we love so that we don't let those memories pass us by in the time that we do have, but allow ourselves to have those positive interactions with people that we will cherish forever, instead of immersing ourselves in these online conversations that will only take us into a very dark place, sometimes, into a negative place that, sometimes, we can't get out of.'

Do we need to introduce more regulation on the internet? That is the perennial question. Do we need to stop people from doctoring images? Do we need to regulate the Facebooks and the Googles of this world? I would say 'yes', because they have a social responsibility. And choice may come into it; we can choose not to go onto the social media platforms, but the adverts do follow us wherever we go. And that's the reality of the lives that we lead.

I want to finish with a poem that I found online, on Pinterest, and I'll try to spend less time online and do the things that I'm preaching today because I want to be true to myself in what I'm saying, but I think this poem is good to finish on.

'i don't want my body to be unblemished / unbroken and crater-free / i want it to be broken in places / to have scars and tiny stories / woven into its tapestry / marks that tell of the way it has stretched / and bent, and cracked open / to let the light of the world / all the way in.../ i don't want to look perfect / i want to look like i've lived.'

So, I think that's a message for us all, and if we can go back to our communities and have these types of discussions with our constituents and with our family members, whether it's online or not, then I hope we will create a more positive and better community online here in Wales.

Can I start by thanking my friend Bethan Sayed for tabling this very short debate and allowing me to follow on from that great opening speech? I haven't got a poem, but I do welcome the opportunity to share my thoughts. All the issues that Bethan talked about are actually costing lives. They're causing heartbreak and anguish for people with eating disorders and other mental health illnesses and to their families as well. And, ultimately, it is costing the NHS more due to the increased spend when someone hits crisis point.

We do, you're quite right, take social media home with us—more so than ever before. And I think that as politicians we know that too often with trolls, but it's not just trolls that are out there. Some may not mean it, but there are images out there, there are adverts out there that portray maybe the wrong things in life. But you are right, because yes, we have Snapchat and we put a filter on our Snapchat, selfies or our Instagram post, but does that make it right? I don't think it does, and that's the question we should all ask ourselves. So, thank you, Bethan, for bringing this forward today because we all in this Chamber need to be working harder on this issue.

But I think it's also worth taking a moment of reflection about the other content available online and a reflection about the suicide of the 14-year-old girl just not long ago. And I send my thoughts, along with the thoughts of the Members in the Chamber, to the family and other families in a similar position. Now, that highlighted to me that there are children out there, there are young people out there, who are able to access online very easily messages to promote suicide and poor health. That is simply unacceptable and I do think we do need to look at regulating various social media platforms.

I'll just finish on a final point, coming back to eating disorders, and I welcome an opportunity to meet with campaigner Hope Virgo in the coming months, who is a very good campaigner on these issues. I do welcome that opportunity, and I know I'll be meeting her with Bethan as well. So, one final pledge to Members within the Chamber and across parties, please support and have a look at Hope's Dump the Scales campaign. She also had similar eating disorder problems during her life and she focuses on tackling the stigma behind them and mental health in general. So, da iawn, Bethan, and I look forward to working with you and challenge the Government on this issue.

I just wanted to thank Bethan for tabling this very important subject. In the Children, Young People and Education Committee's inquiry into the emotional and mental health of young people last year, social media was a constant theme that arose, and, as you've already highlighted, we are more connected than ever before. But actually, I think we are more isolated in many ways than ever before. Some of the stories that we've heard—and you've both alluded to, I think, Molly Russell, who died by suicide as a result of social media images—highlight just how bad things can get, and I hope that the Welsh Government will be supporting measures at a UK level to regulate some of these companies. But I also think it's vital that we do what we can in Wales, through our new curriculum, to actually make children and young people more resilient, but also to seize the opportunities that social media provide to help young people to talk to each other in positive and constructive ways. I think that we can turn this around and I hope that we've got the political will to do that. So, thank you, Bethan.

Thank you, and I call on the Minister for Finance and the Trefnydd to reply to the debate—Rebecca Evans.

Thank you very much, and I'd like to start by thanking Bethan Sayed for bringing forward this short debate on such an important topic today and for doing so in such an engaging and interesting way, but also doing real justice to the seriousness of the issue. I think that that was also very much in the contributions of Jack and Lynne as well.

The internet is an incredible tool. In a matter of moments, we can be searching for the weird and wonderful as well as the mundane. We can be shopping online, watching the latest box sets, playing Minecraft with someone on a different continent, or comparing your thoughts on the latest country music albums—which is how I spend my spare time—but also keeping up to date on the latest news and talking to family and friends as well. So much of modern life is accessed through the internet. It's hard to remember sometimes how we managed before, and it is really quite something to think of children and young people today—the fact that they have not known a world without the internet. For them in particular, digital skills will be so important in terms of their resilience in life but also in terms of how they progress in education and in work.

In many ways, it's young people who are leading the way, and I know from experience that young people are the ones who are best placed to tell us about the latest app or the latest social media platform and how to best use it. But, of course, amongst all of these benefits, there is a real cost, and we've heard about the darker side to the internet. Cyber bullying, grooming and stalking are all issues that have become too familiar. We have to protect children and young people and, indeed, as we've heard, adults, from the dangers of the internet. However, simply excluding people from a world online is neither appropriate nor desirable. We must instead equip people with the knowledge and the skills that they need to be able to think critically and navigate the digital world in a safe, responsible and respectful way. Last year, the Welsh Government published the national online safety action plan. Officially launched by my colleague Kirsty Williams at Porthcawl Comprehensive School on 14 November, the plan provides a focus for our online safety work. Building on our existing programme, it provides a strategic vision for the work that we will do to enhance online safety in Wales to ensure that we do keep children and young people safe. And this is supported by the online safety zone, hosted on Hwb, which is a dedicated area to support teachers, families and learners in this critical area.

But, of course, online safety isn't the only issue, as we've heard—body image and body shaming, distorted perceptions caused by filters and Photoshopping are all causing very real problems for people today. Every day we're faced with messages that tell us that we just aren't good enough. We see so many images of people who are apparently perfect and we don't actually see the many layers of filters or the numerous deleted images that have gone before. There is a growing body of evidence that shows the harm that this is causing, particularly to young people. So, over the last few months, we've published educational resources, examining body image and self-worth in a digital world. The aim is to encourage discussion about the effect of the internet on body image and on self-esteem. We hope to show children and young people how they can instead develop a positive sense of themselves in the world and by taking control and by developing resilience.

There are other aspects to online life that can also be harmful. We may have thousands of followers on Twitter or Instagram but very few real friends. Through social media, we're more connected than we've ever been before and this can bring positive benefits—people can search out support groups, find local tradespeople and local activities to do. However, there is a downside to this connectivity, which Lynne Neagle has spoken about, because living our lives online can lead to real loneliness and social isolation, and that can have a detrimental impact on our mental and our physical well-being.

We know that good health is not simply a result of good healthcare, and that economic, environmental and social issues all have a significant part to play in our long-term health and well-being. So, we have published resources on mental health and the internet. These seek to stimulate conversations in the classroom about the positive and negative impacts of the internet, and we've worked with Childnet to develop, Trust me Cymru. The resource was developed to help primary and secondary teachers to educate children to critically evaluate information that they find online, including content that might seek to deliberately influence their opinions. 

Will you give way? It's a bit delayed, but you mentioned the research on body image in a digital age, and I was wondering if that could be shared with Assembly Members. I'm not sure who conducted that, but I'd be certainly interested to share that with the cross-party group on eating disorders so that we can feed into how we can take part in that in future.

Yes, certainly, I'd be happy to write to you with some more information on the research to which I was referring.

So, the resources that I was referring to are adding to what is a growing resource on the online safety zone, and schools across Wales are encouraged to use those materials. And next week, of course, on 5 February, we will join in the global celebration in recognising Safer Internet Day, as an official supporter. This year's theme is very important: 'together for a better internet'. 

However, our work isn't limited to resources specifically about the online world. For young people, the online world and their offline world are often woven so intrinsically together that they can feel like they're one and the same. We need to help young people excel in all aspects of life so that they grow into adults who are healthy, confident individuals. Education should encourage and support young people to respect themselves and others to value diversity and give them the ability to build healthy, respectful relationships. The new curriculum that the Welsh Government is developing puts those principles at the heart of learning. We do need to remember, however, that the online world can bring many benefits and that some people are missing out on them. Tackling digital exclusion is vital if we are to create an equal society, where everybody has the same opportunity to access online public services, and where everybody has the same chance to find work, to learn and to save money by purchasing cheaper goods and services online. So, in one way or another, the internet is here to stay. It can impact on almost every aspect of our everyday lives, so we have to do all that we can to make sure it is a safe, respectful place for everyone.

Thank you very much, and that brings today's proceedings to a close. Thank you.

The meeting ended at 19:10.