Reform debates often focus on systems: inspection frameworks, safeguarding protocols, statutory plans. But systems do not operate in isolation. Children are being formed not only by schools and families, but by markets. By algorithms. By commercial incentives that shape attention, appetite, and behaviour long before policy intervenes. If we are serious about belonging, we must ask what kind of people our economic structures are quietly producing.

Smartphone penetration among young people in the United Kingdom is now near universal by early adolescence.[i] Social media platforms are designed not merely to host interaction, but to maximise engagement time. Their business models depend upon it. Research increasingly links heavy social media use with rising anxiety, sleep disruption, and reduced wellbeing among adolescents, though causal relationships are complex and contested.[ii] What is less contested is that algorithmic systems are optimised for retention, not flourishing. Attention has become a commodity.

When a child’s focus is continuously captured and redirected by predictive algorithms, patterns of desire and self-perception are shaped accordingly. Comparison intensifies. Performance becomes ambient. Identity is curated in response to feedback loops. For children with SEND, including those with ADHD or autism, digital environments can be both enabling and dysregulating. Online spaces may provide community where physical spaces do not. They may also amplify vulnerability to addiction or social harm. The issue is not technology per se. It is incentive. Platforms profit from extended engagement. That economic reality influences design.

A similar logic applies to food systems. The rapid expansion of ultra-processed foods in the UK has been well documented.[iii] These products are engineered for palatability, shelf life, and repeat consumption. Research increasingly associates high intake of ultra-processed foods with adverse physical and mental health outcomes.[iv] Again, the issue is not individual moral failure. It is structural incentive. Profit increases when consumption increases. Hyper-palatable foods stimulate appetite beyond satiety. Marketing targets children and young people with precision.

Behavioural dysregulation, obesity, and metabolic disorders are then medicalised and managed downstream. Pharmaceutical prescriptions for children and young people, including for attention-related conditions, have risen significantly over the past decade.[v] Some of this reflects improved recognition and reduced stigma. Some reflects genuine clinical need. But when environments are engineered for overstimulation, and then pharmacologically regulated when dysregulation follows, we must ask harder questions about upstream formation.

In a productivity-driven economy, human value is frequently tied to output. Capacity to work. Capacity to perform. Capacity to consume. Those who do not conform to normative productivity patterns can be subtly marginalised. For children with SEND, this tension is acute. Inclusion in school is often framed around attainment and progress metrics. Inclusion in adulthood is frequently framed around employability. Yet if broader economic systems reward attention capture, appetite stimulation, and constant consumption, then inclusion risks becoming conditional on participation in those same logics. Children are encouraged to focus, regulate, and achieve within institutional settings, while simultaneously immersed in commercial ecosystems designed to fragment attention and amplify desire. This is not accidental. It is profitable.

The economist Kate Raworth has argued for economic models that recognise planetary and human limits rather than perpetual growth.[vi] At a smaller scale, the same principle applies to formation. Systems oriented exclusively toward expansion and consumption will shape people accordingly.

Christian thought has long recognised that human beings are shaped by what they love. Augustine described the moral life as the ordering of desire.[vii] Formation is not merely cognitive. It is affective. If digital and commercial systems continuously stimulate desire without satisfaction, restlessness becomes normalised. Belonging then risks becoming transactional. Identity becomes performative. Presence becomes monetised.

This has implications for church life as well. Religious communities are not immune from platform logic. Metrics of growth and visibility can mirror market incentives. The deeper question is this: who, or what, is discipling our appetites? If reform in education addresses only statutory structures while ignoring the economic ecosystems shaping children daily, it will remain partial.

True inclusion requires more than access to services. It requires environments that do not systematically undermine regulation, attention, and relational presence. This does not demand technological rejection or economic retreat. It demands clarity about incentive structures. When profit depends upon capturing attention, stimulating appetite, and sustaining consumption, harm can become economically rational.

Reform that ignores this context risks asking schools and families to compensate for forces far larger than themselves. If belonging is to be more than compliance, we must examine not only our policies but our markets. What kinds of people are our economic systems forming?

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[i] Ofcom, ‘Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report 2023’ (London: Ofcom, 2023), https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/childrens.

[ii] Amy Orben and Andrew K. Przybylski, ‘The Association Between Adolescent Well-Being and Digital Technology Use’, Nature Human Behaviour 3 (2019): 173–182.

[iii] Public Health England, ‘National Diet and Nutrition Survey: Results from Years 9 to 11’ (2016/2017 to 2018/2019) (London: PHE, 2020), https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/ndns-results-from-years-9-to-11-201617-to-201819.

[iv] Carlos A. Monteiro et al., ‘Ultra-Processed Foods: What They Are and How to Identify Them,’ Public Health Nutrition 22, no. 5 (2019): 936–941.

[v] NHS Business Services Authority, ‘Prescription Cost Analysis England 2023’ (Newcastle: NHSBSA, 2023), https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/statistical-collections/prescription-cost-analysis-england.

[vi] Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (London: Random House Business, 2017).

[vii] Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

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Series Note: This is the sixth of eight posts exploring SEND reform, creative education, inclusion, and the theology of the Broken Church.