LONDON – Britain’s Tory government’s Work and Pensions Secretary this week blamed “pornography and video games” for what he called “a mental health crisis among young men” that is leading to them leaving the workforce.
Mel Stride, a Conservative politician since 2006, used adult content as a way to explain disastrous official figures showing that almost a million Britons aged 16 to 24 were unable to find themselves in education, work or employment by the first quarter of 2024 course. .
Stride has held positions in three Tory governments since 2015, with duties overseeing matters that had a direct impact on economic and labor policy. He was Lord Commissioner of the Treasury under David Cameron (2015-2016), Comptroller of the Household, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Paymaster General and Leader of the House of Commons under Theresa May (2016-2019), before was appointed secretary of the Ministry of Finance. Stated for Work and Pensions by current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in October 2022.
The Sunak government has been plagued by accusations of inefficiency and this week a general election has been called for July.
Stride himself caused a scandal last month following his callous statements about cutting off financial support for the mentally ill as part of “an outright attack on people with disabilities,” the opposition said.
This week, Stride claimed that it was not the policies of the Conservative governments that have ruled the UK for 14 years uninterrupted since 2010 that caused this year’s dismal jobs statistics, but that social media and technology have led to a “very worrying” increase of mental health. conditions among young people, fueling economic inactivity,” reported the main conservative newspaper The Telegraph.
Stride also theorized before a government committee that while women’s mental health suffers “due to unrealistic ideals portrayed on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram,” in the case of young men, “things like gaming, and certainly pornography and the like that is a more common factor.”
Stride suggested that more research into technology was needed to address the country’s economic and labor decline.
“I think as a society we probably haven’t yet explored and fully opened up what exactly this technology means for young people’s mental health, because I think the implications are actually very profound and probably an area where more research is needed.”
The Sunak government that Stride is part of has not shown many political victories since taking office as a weak compromise choice at the end of 2022, after Boris Johnson’s scandal-plagued government and Liz Truss’s brief interregnum.
However, one of the Sunak government’s few victories was the 2023 passage of the controversial Online Safety Act, which effectively established government censorship of all adult content, which the legislation says is universally ‘harmful to minors’.