Young Children’s Screen Time

I will call Luke Charters to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. I remind other hon. Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge and the Minister; they may, of course, intervene, if either is prepared to take an intervention. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for these shorter debates.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of screen time on young children.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy; thank you for your time this morning.

I have always said that I am a dad first and an MP second. My son Robin is three; he is kind, and he is happiest when he is outside playing. I am proud of him every single day. My youngest, Louis, is seven months old, and he is already curious about the world, watching and taking everything in. When this job takes me away from them, it hurts. One thing is very clear: when I am at home, I need to be a properly present dad.

I want to be honest with the House: there were weeks when my phone told me I was spending more than six hours a day on it. Even on weekends, when family time should be protected, it was four or five hours. When kids are young, we never get that time back, and every hour counts. Smartphones, though, are a feat of human engineering and have been deliberately designed to take our attention, quietly and relentlessly. I had to make a deliberate change for my two boys: cutting my screen time down, choosing to be on the floor building Brio—even making a Duplo Parliament—rather than being half present and half scrolling. Present fatherhood starts with all of us putting the phone down.

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. From the persona that he presents in the Chamber, I have no doubt that he is a good dad, and very responsive to his children. What is undoubted is that, when used correctly, digital technology has positive effects, but use near bedtime or overuse is leading teachers to highlight that pupils are coming to school “wrecked” or tired, and excessive use is linked to lower academic performance. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we must help parents and carers find a balance in the use of screen time? I made that very request in the press today.

Parents do need a bit of support when it comes to guidance and advice around what is excessive, particularly when it comes to unsupervised screen time.

My hon. Friend—my actual friend—is giving a brilliant speech. I pay tribute to him: he is a brilliant advocate for our generation of parents and also a wonderful dad. Does he agree that parents today are in desperate need of such guidance? I recently met Jonathan Haidt, the author of “The Anxious Generation”, and I asked him straight out, “What do we do about screens?”. He told me that watching long-form narrative content with our children is fine, but that letting them watch short-form content by themselves is a problem. We need a kind of five-a-day public health campaign from the Government. I hope that the Minister will address that.

Before the hon. Gentleman replies, the hon. Lady is perfectly right that long-form content is better in some contexts, but not here.

Thank you, Sir Jeremy. Briefly, my hon. Friend is a fantastic mum herself and an advocate for the great parents of Britain. Parents need advice about unsupervised screen time, particularly on smartphones, which is totally different from sitting down at a laptop doing homework. I will touch on adaptive technologies later.

Every time a child looks up and finds a parent looking down at a phone, a lesson is quietly taught about what deserves their attention. That truth was reinforced when I spoke to Zack George, known to many as Steel from “Gladiators” and now an ambassador for Smartphone Free Childhood. Zack’s message to young people is stark and powerful:

“Don’t let your phone steal your power.”

He has dedicated his life to inspiring kids and talked with thousands of schoolchildren in more than 400 school visits. Through his brand, Zactiv, he is sending a clear message to children: if you want to grow up happy and healthy, stop scrolling and keep it IRL.

I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to Born in Bradford, an internationally recognised research cohort study. It has just launched the “In Real Life” trial with children in Bradford aged 12 to 15 to test whether reducing their social media use will reduce anxiety and improve their sleep and their relationship with their parents. Does my hon. Friend agree that such research and evidence will be essential to understanding the harmful impacts of social media on our young people?

I thank my hon. Friend for citing that study. We can draw real lessons from what is happening in Australia. Hon. Members may not be aware that some bookshops in Australia are seeing a resurgence from new young readers who are putting their phones down in favour of novels.

I have recently watched content from Dr Rangan Chatterjee, who has consistently warned about the dangers of excessive screen time, and in preparation for this speech I also gathered insights from the Youth Sport Trust and BookTrust. Each of those voices highlights similar concerns. Staying with voices from the education sector, I spoke with teacher Lee Parkinson, aka Mr P—my wife, a primary school teacher herself, can often be seen scrolling through his content on Instagram. He made a really important point that I would like all hon. Members to take away: not all screen time is created equal. Used well and supervised, technology can support learning—for a child with dyslexia, speech-to-text software can remove barriers and build confidence—but unsupervised access to personal smartphones and tablets is entirely different.

As someone who is dyslexic and has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, I used my phone quite a lot at school. I was also bullied quite badly, and my phone was a release. Unfortunately, the Conservatives cut the youth services in Somerset that saved my life by 100%. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government should invest more in youth services in rural communities to help young people to thrive?

I thank the hon. Member for sharing his personal experience with us. I completely agree that young people need support in their real life, whether through youth services or physical activity.

I thank my hon. Friend not just for securing this debate, but for speaking powerfully as a parent about why this is so important. We must be honest: guidance is great, but it can often miss the mark when it comes to answering the questions that parents are actually asking. I am holding a forum later in February to speak to local parents about exactly what they are looking for from the guidance. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that the guidance, when we deliver it, is not only evidence-based, but grounded in the questions and experiences of parents right across Britain today?

I thank my hon. Friend for all the work he is doing through the Labour group for men and boys. It is refreshing that this Government, and particularly the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, are carefully considering this with a lot of deep thought. The consultation will not look just for one silver bullet; it will look at a variety of options.

Children are spending hours a day on platforms designed to maximise engagement and deliver constant dopamine hits through short-form video content and infinite scroll loops. The evidence increasingly shows that that is affecting attention, behaviour in schools, sleep and emotional regulation.

I am at the other end of my parenting journey—my little girl is 24 today. She is a paediatric nurse and has drawn my attention to the “Cocomelon” channel on YouTube, which is a sensory overload. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is about not just the length of time, but the content—and sometimes the garish audio and colour of that content?

I wish my hon. Friend’s daughter a happy birthday and thank her for the work she is doing as a paediatric nurse. “Cocomelon” has been described as “visual fentanyl” for young children. What is much more appropriate, particularly at a younger age, is more hand-drawn types of content, like “Peppa Pig”. Perhaps we all ought to go for a bit more Peppa and a bit less JJ.

You need not take my word for it, Sir Jeremy: research published by the Department for Education showed that nearly 98% of children under the age of two engage with screens every day. A University College London study in 2026 has found that toddlers now average about two hours of screen time daily—far more than my little lad is allowed. Analysis from the Centre for Social Justice estimates that, very sadly, nearly 800,000 under-fives are now using social media. Ofcom data from 2024 reveals that one third of five to seven-year-olds are using social media without any supervision. That scares the living daylights out of me as a parent.

Such data is stark, but it is just part of the story. Somewhat ironically, I turned to social media to ask my constituents about their own experiences with their young children, and they expressed concern about more than the quantity of screen time that children have. Parents responded that they were even more worried about the type of content to which children are exposed. One teacher shared with me feedback from NASUWT’s “Better Deal on Behaviour” report, with a year 1 teacher describing how children were beginning to mimic inappropriate behaviour that they had seen online, despite being far too young to understand it. Another raised the idea of digital diets. They made the point that screen time can range from something as harmless as using Google Maps to find the local library, to accessing inappropriate material. To go back to the words of Mr P, not all screen time is created equal.

On this point, it feels timely to mention that I am pleased the Government have this week launched a new campaign, “You Won’t Know until You Ask”, to address harmful content. That follows the finding from YouGov that half of British parents admit to never speaking to their children about toxic content. Encouraging parents to sit down with their children and talk about online harms helps to break down barriers. It is a healthy step in the right direction.

As I said, my hon. Friend is giving a brilliant speech. Does he share my concern that relying solely on parental intervention in relation to this huge swathe of technological advances is not enough? We do not want children to start hiding things from their parents; we want to ensure that they are not exposed to it in the first place.