Social media misleads children into questioning gender says Cass

Social media presents unrealistic images and expectations which mislead children, according to Lady Hilary Cass, leader of the 2024 review into gender medicine. When a child does not fit the ideas about gender that they see online, they can erroneously conclude they are transgender, she said.

Lady Cass led the 2024 into NHS gender care for under-18s which led to widespread changes including a ban on puberty blockers. Her review found that gender medicine was on “shaky foundations” when it came to evidence for medical treatment.

Speaking to the BBC following publication by the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, of new guidance for gender transitioning in schools, Lady Cass said: “I think children and young people were being given a narrative that it’s not OK to be anything but absolutely typical of the other girls on Instagram.”

“I think what has kind of misled children is the belief that if you are not a typical girl, if you like playing with trucks, or boys who like dressing up or that you have same-sex attraction, that means that you’re trans and actually it’s not like that, but those are all normal variations,” she continued.

Talking about the new guidance for schools, Lady Cass said that it did “a good job of explaining that you have to be particularly careful about pre-pubescent young children,” noting that taking steps to transition too early can get children “locked on to a trajectory that may not have been the correct natural trajectory for them”.

When asked about the number of children who experienced discomfort with their gender that would continue into adulthood, Lady Cass said it was impossible to say exactly but that it would be a “really tiny number”.

About those few, she said: “for them, a medical pathway is the only way they're going to live their life comfortably. And we don't understand why that is, but we have to try and help those people thrive as much as the young people who are going to grow out of this.”

However, she also noted that “there are all the ones that me and parents and teachers will tell you about who go through two or three years of gender questioning and then desist.”

Lady Cass said that on social media there was a “lack of realism about what transition would really mean and how hard it would be”. She went on to point out the “quite intensive medical treatments” that are involved and “sometimes quite brutal surgeries”. If some young people had “taken more time,” she noted, then they may not have pursued transgender treatments.