Children today are growing up in a world unlike any previous generation. They are exposed to an online environment that is vast, unfiltered and always present.

The internet is effectively unbounded. Its great advantages are that it is free and unrestricted, with organic potential for innovation and great leaps forward in understanding and development. Its scale feels infinite but, in truth, so do its dangers. Children can encounter instantly available material far beyond their emotional maturity: explicit sexual content, extreme violence, hatred, and contact from unknown adults.

That is why I welcome the Conservatives’ recent proposals for a total ban on children accessing social media platforms. Social media is not a neutral technology: it is deliberately designed to capture attention, to manipulate emotion and to keep users scrolling. That is particularly harmful for children, whose judgement and resilience are still developing.

I have written before in The Herald about my concerns that unrestricted internet access and excessive exposure to social media are causing real and lasting harm. Experts told parents and teachers at a recent meeting I hosted in Bordon that more than half of children have already been exposed to hardcore pornography online - and that most of this exposure does not come from adult websites, but from mainstream social media platforms.

It was also sobering to be reminded that the iPhone is now over 18 years old. A child born today will never experience a world in which smartphones are not embedded in daily life.

So what can be done?

The conclusion from that meeting was unequivocal. Only a unified approach, involving government, schools and parents, will work. Schools told us they face intense local pressure when attempting to restrict phone use or promote safer online behaviour. Patchwork solutions simply do not hold.

This problem goes beyond hardware. Social media platforms profit from engagement, and without firm rules, children will continue to be exposed to content that no responsible adult would willingly place in front of them.

Pornography. Beheadings. Violence. Extremism. Terror. These are things we instinctively recoil from - yet they are commonplace online and easily accessible to children.

But this debate must be approached with balance. Adults should be free to make their own choices. Adults, at least, possess the capacity to distinguish online content from reality and to take responsibility for their consumption. Children do not. For them, the boundaries are blurred and the consequences far more severe.

Government rightly speaks about defence and national security. But defence must also be user-facing. If cyberspace is now a frontline, then protecting children within it is not optional.

This issue demands action, and quickly. I want a future in which my daughters, and their children after them, are protected from unnecessary harm. It is not an admission of failure to recognise that this is one area where parents cannot act alone.