Phones for under-16s should be banned with ‘tobacco-like’ health warnings on the packaging, campaigners say.
Parent group UsforThem believes that smartphones can distract, isolate and depress children as a result of addictive apps.
The campaign seeks government intervention to help children become less digitally dependent.
It is backed by Katharine Birbalsingh, who has been called Britain’s strictest head teacher and claims phones ‘break their brains’.
UsforThem’s plea comes after actress Sophie Winkleman revealed that she twice took her children out of school because she heard they would be getting iPads from the age of six.
Backed by ‘Britain’s strictest head teacher’ Katharine Birbalsingh (pictured) who claims phones ‘break children’s brains’, the campaign is seeking government intervention to help children become less digitally dependent
“Banning smartphones for under-16s is an absolute necessity,” said Ms Birbalsingh The sun.
Ms Birbalsingh, who stepped down as the government’s czar of social mobility for saying she was doing ‘more harm than good’, argued that things like sex, cigarettes, alcohol, driving and some movies are already banned for children.
“Yet we make access to this and much worse through smartphone so easy, done without parents’ knowledge, not to mention how phones break their brains,” she added.
The UsforThem campaign, launched yesterday, aims to ban smartphones for children and calls for a tobacco-style regulatory framework for them.
This would require manufacturers, suppliers and telephone providers to prove that their products and services are safe for children, while prohibiting the sale of those products until proof is provided.
Similar calls for smartphone bans for much younger children have been going on for years, and a ban for children under 16 was raised in 2016 by a former number 10 policy chief.
A leading psychologist, Dr. Álvaro Bilbao, believes smartphones slow down a child’s ability to improve their attention span and develop greater control over their own minds.
Dr. Bilbao believes that the screen time of children under six should be severely restricted to allow them to develop.
He said: ‘Children who regularly come into contact with mobile phone, tablet or computer screens are more irritable and have poorer attention, memory and concentration than those who do not use them.’
Dr. Bilbao, a brain injury expert and psychotherapist, said the risk of psychological and behavioral problems such as attention deficit disorder, depression and addiction problems increases as young children spend more time on mobile phones and tablets.
He has now written a book called Understanding Your Child’s Brain to help parents decide how to approach the problem.
The father-of-three says devices with screens should “grow into the child’s hands” once they are emotionally and intellectually developed.
Dr. Bilbao said children’s use of smartphones was “like giving an 800cc motorcycle to a child who has just learned to walk.”
Speak against The timesformer Peep Show actress Ms. Winkleman revealed her concern that devices handed out from a young age affected how children learned.
She said she “immediately started looking at different schools” when she heard that the students would be given “tablets, all from first to sixth year.”
Phones for under-16s ‘should be banned’ with ‘tobacco-style health warnings’ on packaging, say campaigners (file photo)
Her children, Maud and Isabella, attended the exclusive £20,000-a-year Thomas’s Battersea with their cousins, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, who have since left for a co-ed prep school in Berkshire.
Claudia Winkleman’s half-sister praised the south London institution, which in some cases charges more than £8,000 per semester, but said it didn’t suit her children and was concerned that the use of online learning in UK schools was on the rise. it is normalizing.
“The internet is a toxic wilderness that we let kids stumble through unprotected,” said the actor, concerned about the accessibility of extremist content online.
Winkleman, who is married to Lord Frederick Windsor, the son of Prince Michael of Kent, protested the adoption of digital learning in British schools, which she said she believed was parent-driven.
She said her eldest daughter was allowed to use a tablet for a limited period of time on Sunday, and said she supported a parent group lobbying to ban smartphones for under-16s.
In 2016, former No10 policy chief Steve Hilton called for a smartphone ban for under-16s.
Writing for The Daily Mail, he said: ‘Devices have brought entertainment and education, but they have also erased the boundaries between the worlds of children and adults.
“We need to better guard the boundary between children and technology, because unrestricted access to the internet prematurely exposes children to unhealthy sexual norms and disrupts normal social interactions.”