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Letters

Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form. Submissions should not exceed 400 words.
Meta Platforms has agreed to pay up to US$18 billion to settle the social media harm case brought by US state attorneys general, and to implement default protections for teens, including a two-hour daily limit. A company does not agree to a sum like that over a misunderstanding.
In Hong Kong, the company has started helping parents protect teenagers online. While it deserves credit for both moves, they don’t undo what has already happened. Litigation was needed to change a handful of settings and there has been no settlement outside the United States. The harm of the past decade was not reversed last month, and our students are still carrying it.
Dr Lam Ching-choi, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Mental Health, has said that prevention is always better than cure, and that the first tier of a proposed three-tier mental health support model must be broad.
The Education Bureau’s digital education blueprint requires schools to write digital education into school development plans. The blueprint appears to focus more on artificial intelligence than social media, though social media platforms shape students’ lives just as much. Schools need not wait for a policy covering social media.
In my view, the work of preventing harm to children’s mental health starts with us adults using our own phones less frequently in front of them. Next come clear boundaries, set by schools rather than left to individual teachers, between when these tools help students learn and when they stand in the way.
In the 88 primary schools we work with, we have found that what protects children is relationships. A child who has one adult at school who knows them, and classmates they can be honest with, needs no screen to feel worthy.
The term began on September 1. Use these first weeks to tell students they are valued and loved. A child who is understood at school is less likely to be looking for a chatbot at midnight.
Raymond Yang Sze-ngai, co-founder and executive director, Just Feel
Public hospital service delivery needs improvement
It appears that the Hospital Authority prefers to stay silent on my grievance about the treatment I received at a public hospital (“Cardiac patient decries wait times”, August 6).
In September 2024, I was referred by a private doctor to Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital for the treatment of left ventricular hypertrophy – a condition I had not heard of before – after it was detected by an electrocardiogram. After waiting 20 months, it was finally my turn to see a public doctor in July this year. The doctor simply told me that I needed another ECG as well as an echocardiogram. I was then scheduled to do the former in January 2027 and the latter in October 2030.
Given resource constraints, I understand the need to queue for a public doctor, though a 20-month wait for an initial consultation appears excessive. Nevertheless, I am deeply disappointed that I have to wait six months for one diagnostic test and more than four years for another. Furthermore, I have yet to be advised of the implications of my condition, let alone a treatment plan.
My case is by no means an isolated one. If what I experienced is the norm, there must be something seriously amiss within our public healthcare system. The more-than-four-year wait for a diagnostic test makes a mockery of our healthcare authority’s recent emphasis on shifting healthcare priorities from curative treatment to disease prevention and early diagnosis. It also runs counter to the spirit of our chief executive’s oft-cited motto: “People’s livelihood is no small matter.”
To ensure that our healthcare policies and services are truly user-centred, it is high time our government considered initiating a public consultation exercise to gather feedback from all key stakeholders – with a particular focus on patients’ perspectives – on how to address the flaws of current healthcare arrangements and improve service delivery. It might be wishful thinking on my part, but I earnestly hope to see this initiative considered for inclusion in the chief executive’s coming policy address.
S.B. Lai, Chai Wan


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Meet Ethan Hawke’s youngest daughter Indiana, who made a rare red carpet appearance

Social media

Let’s protect Hong Kong’s children from social media ourselves

Students use their smartphones while queuing outside a restaurant in Tseung Kwan O on October 16,2025. Photo:  Elson Li

Social media must join the fight against teen suicides

Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen

Families who lost members to suicide due to social media addiction reacting after a jury found Meta Platforms and YouTube liable in the social media addiction trial, outside the Los Angeles Superior Court in California on March 25, in a landmark ruling. Photo: EPA

Young people use their mobile phones at a shopping mall in Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong on July 8. Social media platforms should detect and remove harmful content and act swiftly against cyberbullying. Photo: Elson Li

Don’t leave Hong Kong parents to their own devices on child social media use

Girls focus on a smartphone inside a fast-food outlet in Kennedy Town on August 7. Photo: Karma Lo

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) talks to schoolchildren and the Premier of South Australia Peter Malinauskas (right), as he cooks sausages on a barbecue during an official function to mark the start of Australia’s social media reform at Kirribilli House in Sydney on December 10, 2025. Photo: AFP

A YouTube advertisement runs at Westminster Underground station after then British prime minister Keir Starmer announced a social media ban for under 16-year-olds, in London, Britain, on June 15. Photo: Reuters

Suicide prevention in Hong Kong: let’s normalise reaching out for help

People lay flowers outside a building in Taikoo Shing, where a 48-year-old woman and her 12-year-old daughter fell from the same flat hours apart on June 10 after a reported argument over studies, raising concerns over the city's level of mental support. Photo: Sun Yeung

For better mental health, help students connect and build inclusive empathy

Students resume school in Wan Chai in 2022. Photo: Dickson Lee

Hong Kong under-15 suicides hit decade high as social media comes under scrutiny

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention has also called for schools to strengthen support for students in light of a spate of suicide attempts around the start of the academic year. Photo: Jelly Tse

The centre conducted an AI-assisted review of news reports on suicide cases by six local Chinese-language media outlets and found that most of the stories failed to comply with WHO guidelines. Photo: Jelly Tse

Opinion

Readers discuss how the city should shield children from social media’s harmful effects, and the public healthcare system


Readers discuss how the city should shield children from social media’s harmful effects, and the public healthcare system.


.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Readers discuss how the city should shield children from social media’s harmful effects, and the public healthcare system

Readers discuss how the city should shield children from social media’s harmful effects, and the public healthcare system