Save kids from the mobile menace – by turning YOURS off

THIS is a game to play with teenagers in the hope of getting their attention for a second. Good luck! It’s called ‘spot a child who doesn’t have their head bent over a phone’. To make things more challenging, ask them to name one of their friends who doesn’t insist on taking their device everywhere, even to school, where it has become as much of a signifier as flash trainers once were. The likelihood is that they will struggle to win this game – after all, 90 per cent of over-13year-olds now have a mobile phone.

Indeed, the phoneless ten per cent are seen as social outcasts by their peers. They’re not on WhatsApp or Snapchat. They don’t join in games such as Fortnite or arrive at school bleary-eyed after being up all night trying to beat another player.

Nor will they suffer the in dignity of my neighbours’ 15-year-old who slept with her phone clasped to her head and had to get her mum to cut it out of her hair in the morning because it had melded into the gel. Or David Baddiel’s son, who was captured for his dad’s Twitter followers scrolling on his phone instead of taking in the breathtaking scenery on a family holiday.

My ten-year-old daughter is desperate for a phone but I am hoping to persuade her out it, not least because I want her to be in the ten per cent as I fear they may be the only children from this precious generation who will not go on to develop long-term physical and mental-health issues.

If we were looking for a way for our young people to self-destruct, then giving them free, uncontrolled access to a smart device is the answer because, for developing minds, it is the most dangerous weapon of all.

Of course, there may be those who read this and think that it i s yet another r anti ng by a Luddite hypocrite.

Yes, I use computers – this piece was written on one. I also think that the invention of what we used to call the World Wide Web was a work of wonder. Knowledge is power, after all, and the fact that it can be used to help our children access remote archives for study, or even recreation, is a marvel.

But the internet is also doing them untold damage. There has been an unprecedented rise in emergency psychiatric admissions for teenagers since 2010, and cases of chronic dependency on these devices also appear to be growing more dire each year.

At the NSPCC annual conference last week, for instance, paediatric consultant Dr Jo Begent presented a case of a ten-year-old boy who became so addicted to an online game that he ignored basic bodily functions and ended up with a deformed bowel.

Ofsted head Amanda Spielman has called on schools to see the benefits of banning mobile phones in state schools, both in the classroom and playground. First-year pupils at Eton College were told to hand in their mobiles at night earlier in the year with remarkable results, not least as many of the pupils confessed to being relieved of the tyranny of constantly having to check for social-media posts.

BIZARRELY, there is no rule in the UK that prohibits the use of phones in schools, as both the Department for Education and the National Association of Head Teachers believe it is a decision for each institution. However, the reality is that introducing a nationwide ban in schools is, as the young people might say, ‘a no-brainer’. Results go up and bad behaviour goes down.

Spielman also called for schools to bring back old-fashioned punishments such as writing out lines. And why not? If nothing else, all that repetition helps improve your handwriting. Ultimately, however, as adults we also must do our bit to stop this insidious decline by using another old-fashioned technique: teaching by example.

So, the next time you go to the park with any little ones, don’t just sit there scrolling through your messages while they play on their own. Put the phone down – or even turn it off – and get up, walk over to the swings and give them the tender love and attention that is more powerful and addictive than anything that can come out of a computer.