Give children brick phones, not smartphones, says Sophie Winkleman
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Schoolchildren should be given “brick” phones instead of smartphones to protect them from social media, Sophie Winkleman has said.
The actress and campaigner, who is the daughter-in-law of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, said there were “only downsides” to children having access to TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
She called on the Government to get behind a grassroots campaign to ban smartphones for under-16s.
Winkleman has two daughters with her husband, Lord Frederick Windsor, the second cousin to the King. Speaking to the Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast, she said: “Something needs to happen from higher up. I don’t know how anyone can defend social media and smartphone use for under-16s.
“When people say, ‘I want to know my child is safe…’ There are different kinds of brick phones that call and text. If you really want to know where your child is every second of the day, you can put a little tracker in his trainer. Why do they need anything other than to call and text each other?
“I don’t understand it. There’s only downsides.”
She claimed that social media use had “without a doubt” contributed to a rising suicide rate among 15 to 19-year-olds, and to increases in anxiety, depression, self-harm and anorexia.
“We’ve got to take the reins and not let our children’s emotional and neurological well-being be compromised,” she said.
“We have to wipe it out for all of them. Then they can simply text each other or call each other and have a phone call at night instead of going down endless rabbit holes – you know, comparing themselves to their friends, not getting likes on their stupid posts, meeting other weirdos online.
“None of this stuff has an upside, and I want people to come together and say, ‘Let’s get rid of this. For every child in Britain’.”
“The brick phones do everything children need. They don’t need anything else.”
Esther Ghey, mother of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey, has called for the introduction of a law banning smartphones for under-16s.
Winkleman, who has appeared in the Channel 4 comedy Peep Show, ITV period drama Sanditon and the recent Wonka film, is also unhappy with children using digital screens in schools.
Pupils are calmer, happier and more engaged in schools that limit technology use to a minimum, said the actress, who is patron of the educational charity School-Home Support.
She has withdrawn her children from two schools after discovering that they were to be given iPads in lessons.
“I feel that digital learning is a huge problem,” Winkleman said. “Big countries like China are dramatically rowing back on tech in the classroom. And Sweden’s torn up its digital charter and is going back to books, paper and pen.
“It’s happening all over the world in countries like East Asia who have the best education systems in the world. Bill Gates himself said that devices have a terrible record in the classroom.
“I’m anxious and frustrated that Britain is still drinking the tech Kool-Aid, thinking that digital learning is progressive and shiny, and it’s actually being proved to be the very opposite.”
Learning on a screen is “boring and bleak” but also bad for their brains, she argued.
“I think it’s particularly pernicious with children, because these learning apps are sort of trussed up to be full of exciting animals and cakes and balloons. And it’s so bad for the child’s brain to get used to a cake exploding into balloons if he gets ‘one plus one’.
“It’s just paving the way for the dopamine addiction that happens to them a little bit later.”
Winkleman also voiced her support for the King following his recent cancer diagnosis.
“I’m very sad about the news,” she said. “As everyone knows, he’s an incredibly hardworking, passionate, brilliant man. And we need him. This country needs him.
“I, with the rest of the country and the rest of the world, just wish him well. I know it’s an odd thing to say that he’s a very strong, fit man apart from the cancer, but he is, so I’m sure he’ll slay it.”
