MP: My daughter texts me from her bedroom to ask what’s for dinner
A ForMEr minister yesterday told how his daughter texted him from her bedroom asking him what was for dinner, as he warned children were glued to their mobile phones. Tory MP Tim Loughton said families were not talking to each other any more because children were addicted to social media.
He said that face-to-face communication had never been more ‘rare and remote’ and that many young people could no longer get up in the morning without putting pictures of their breakfast on sites such as Instagram.
Speaking during a Commons debate on young people’s health, the former children’s minister also warned that social media was ‘not conducive’ to young people’s mental health.
In a sign of the times, he said: ‘I had an example recently where one of my daughters, I won’t name which one, basically put in her request for supper by text message and she was in her bedroom, to my wife and I in the kitchen.’
He joked that his response was: ‘Supper’s off.’
recent figures showed children who spend more than three hours each school day on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are more than twice as likely to have poor mental health.
A report from the office for National Statistics showed that 12 per cent of children who spend no time on social networking websites have symptoms of mental ill health.
But the figure rose to 27 per cent for those who were glued to the websites for three hours or more a day. And, earlier this year, a survey of 2,000 British parents found adults typically send 5,800 texts and 260 emails to their partner and children each year – but they spend less than an hour face-to-face together each day.
Mr Loughton said that although communication had become much easier, technological devices had replaced conversations in person. He said: ‘The irony is that in a day when communicating has never been easier – by email, by social media, by mobile device, by tablet or whatever – communications between human beings face-to-face have never been more rare and remote.
‘You can’t get up in the morning without the latest iPhone, without checking your Facebook, without tweeting what you’re having for breakfast and Instagramming a photograph of what you’re having for breakfast.
‘And that’s just after you’ve got up.’
He added: ‘The stresses to succeed in school and the hothouse of exams and testing are not conducive to the best of mental health unless some support is there to help young people through all sorts of challenges which we never had in my day.’
Mr Loughton also warned of the dangers of the web and the effect sites could have on young people.
He said those websites that encourage self-harm posed a very real risk and that sending sexual texts or images could come back to haunt youngsters online.
He said: ‘In the old days a note passed across a classroom sealed with a loving kiss at worst might end up on a playground floor.
‘These days the equivalent, and the worst extremes of it is a form of sexting, goes viral and ends up on social media in perpetuity open to millions of people to see it.’
Huw Merriman, the Tory MP for Bexhill and Battle, said he believed there was ‘too much pressure being loaded on people too young’.
He said: ‘Social media and the internet, as pioneering as it is, is a curse on wellbeing.
‘The internet service providers need to be forced to do more. Every young person should have the right to have their web history expunged and deleted.’
The latest oxo Tv advert reflects the way that children’s obsession with their mobiles have changed meal times.
The commercial, which aired for the first time this month, features teenagers playing on their phones at the table. one even takes a picture of her meal on her mobile and posts it online.
A survey in August found that one in three British households has tried unsuccessfully to ban tech while eating.
‘Rare and remote’