After three years of campaigning to get smartphones out of classrooms and to raise the minimum age for social media, I welcome the UK government’s recent announcements. Requiring schools to be smartphone-free and introducing a minimum age of 16 for social media are...
Across the globe, a quiet shift has taken place in family life. The moment a child is handed an iPad or smartphone, childhood begins to recede. We have placed young minds into an uncontrolled experiment, pitched against the most sophisticated engineers in Silicon...
“My child doesn’t have social media… they only watch YouTube.” I hear this from parents all the time. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: YouTube is social media. And we need to stop reassuring ourselves that it must be harmless because “everyone else allows it.” It...
The New Blueprint of Masculinity, Shaped by Algorithms Between social media and video games, 73% of adolescent boys are routinely exposed to content telling them what it means to be a man. The themes are predictable: build muscle, make money, fight hard. Digital...
It’s the concern I hear most often from parents. And it’s understandable. We all want our children safe. But tracking kids is new. We grew up walking to school and visiting friends without GPS in our pockets. Now, children are more anxious, distracted and exposed than...
With the head of Ofsted calling for smartphones to be removed from schools, the spotlight is rightly on the issue. Yet while this support is welcome, government policy has not gone far enough. We are still waiting for clear, strict guidelines to make all schools truly...
