Concern over screen time

Too much screentime blamed for behavioural issues

CHILD safety experts and behavioural psychologists have called for parents to ban young children from popular smartphone apps Snapchat and Instagram in a desperate bid to stop online bullying.

CHILD safety experts and behavioural psychologists have called for parents to ban young children from popular smartphone apps Snapchat and Instagram in a desperate bid to stop online bullying.

Angels Hope founder Chloe Cunningham said children under the age of 13 were creating accounts on Snapchat by lying about their age and accused the platform of failing to police the problem.

Snapchat claims not to be available to children under 13 but a bombshell report by British marketing firm Ofcom found half of all 11-year-olds were using the service.

Ms Cunningham said children who had not developed methods for coping with bullying were particularly vulnerable to abuse on social media.

“It is very easy to create a false account on these platforms and social media makes it a lot easier for people to write hurtful comments,” she said.

“We want to see more restrictions in place by the platforms themselves including a twostep authentication step to make it more difficult for children to create fake accounts.

“It is also up to parents to make sure they monitor what their children are doing on their phones.”

Snapchat did not respond to questions.

UK Children’s Charities’ Coalition on internet Safety secretary John Carr said “tens of millions of children” were using social media websites with fictitious ages.

“There is a gigantic amount of blind eye turning ... they choose to do nothing about it because they don’t have to do anything about it,” he said.

Child psychologist Dr Fiona Martin also warned young children could develop behavioural issues if they spent too long looking at screens.

“We would encourage children to take breaks and move around and put physical activity into the day,” she said.

“Children who spend too long looking at screens can develop language difficulties and it can affect their ability to have conversations and read body language.

“They can also miss out on developing a wide range of interests.”

Ms Cunningham said Angels Hope would campaign to enforce restrictions for kids.