Smartphones are a ‘tragedy’ for family life as parents and children get swallowed up by social media. Campaigners and the Children’s Commissioner are urging parents to ditch their phones
Parents are being warned to ditch their phones over Christmas by the Children’s Tsar.
Her “heartfelt plea” was made just as a survey found almost half of parents will allow smartphones at the Christmas table. England’s Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, said young people had been telling her about mums and dads scrolling during mealtimes and texting when out for walks together.
Parents should lead by example and get off their phones this Christmas when spending time with family, she said and urges families to have “phone-free time”, she said establishing rules that apply to everyone in the household can help.
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“Whatever you say, they will follow what you do,” she said. “We have to lead as adults. We can’t talk about banning the kids if we’re not doing it ourselves.”
She admitted she had previously been “as guilty” on the issue, but added: “The thing about children is they will copy what you do, not what you say. So absolutely, let’s this Christmas put our phones down, spend time together where both the adults and the children are off their phones together.
“I can’t tell you how many children tell me about sitting at dinner and the parents are on the phone, or they’re out walking on their mobile phones instead of talking. And the kids are crying out for the engagement and the support with mum and dad. So this Christmas, let’s turn them off, let’s have some fun together, and let’s lead by example.”
Daisy Greenwell, the co-founder and director of the Smartphone Free Childhood movement, said: “One of the most tragic things about smartphones and social media and the addictive nature of them.
“They come between our relationships with the people we love the most. It happens in a really quiet and insidious way we don’t really notice. They take our attention away from each other into our phones.
“Your child is talking to you and you are ignoring them because you are too busy on your phone. That erodes family life and doesn’t get talked about enough.
“We are all guilty of it and don’t notice it but it’s not really our fault as it’s designed to do that. Parents say their child just gets swallowed up by it and they feel like they lose them. Suddenly there is nothing more interesting than being on their phone.”
They are urging parents to delay giving their child a phone for as long as possible or if it’s too late “put it away as often as you can in a drawer – out of sight, out of mind”.
“Don’t have it in the child’s bedroom at night. You’ve got to dethrone it as the most important thing in our life,” Daisy said. “The less time you spend on it the more you realise how completely boring it is compared to real life.”
The advice comes after the schools watchdog Ofsted chief also raised concerns that social media is “chipping away” at children’s attention spans and promoting disrespectful behaviour. Data published earlier this month found children aged between eight and 14 are spending an average of nearly three hours online each day and also turning to their devices late at night.
Teenagers aged from 13 to 14 are using their smartphones, tablets or laptops for around four hours a day, while eight and nine-year-olds are online for two hours, and 10 to 12-year-olds for around three hours, Ofcom said. Adults in the UK, meanwhile, spend an average of four-and-a-half hours online a day with 18 to 24-year-olds averaging six hours and 20 minutes a day, the regulator found.
Dame Rachel has launched a new guide offering parents tips and advice for online safety entitled “What I wish my parents knew”. It advised parents to be “kind” but “firm” with their children, involve them in rule-setting, and keep the conversation around online safety open and speak often.
Comparing the approach to sex education, Dame Rachel said teenagers had told her they would rather not have a “big one conversation” on online safety, but instead to speak from an early age in a “relaxed and natural” way. Dame Rachel, who has previously called for an Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s, said: “I’m going to watch really carefully, and at the end of the year, if things are not better, I will be calling for that social media ban under the age of 16.”
In a recent survey carried out by More in Common for Yondr, found nearly half of parents (48%) with children aged 18 or younger plan to allow phones at the Christmas dinner table this year. The survey of 2,009 UK adults found nearly four in 10 (38%) adults say smartphones have disrupted their festive season in some way.
Nearly one in five (19%) said children no longer properly interact with relatives at Christmas, the poll found, rising to nearly a third (30%) for parents of 0 to 18-year-olds. It found nearly one in four (23%) parents said their children cannot sit through a Christmas film without checking a device.
