Don’t give toddlers phones to play with, says tsar
PARENTS should be urged not to give their young children smartphones to play with, a government tsar said yesterday.
Katharine Birbalsingh, chairman of the Social Mobility Commission, claimed toddlers get distracted by the devices and can find it harder to learn to read and enjoy books.
She called for a nationwide campaign to give parents advice about how to bring up their children, akin to the successful ‘five-a-day’ slogan for healthy eating.
Miss Birbalsingh told MPs teachers need more discipline in classrooms and must ensure the most disadvantaged pupils do their homework.
Asked by the Commons women and equalities committee how she would improve social mobility in ‘left-behind’ areas, she replied: ‘Children, wherever they are, need the same sorts of things. They need consistency. They need the adults in their lives holding really high standards for them.’
Miss Birbalsingh, a free school founder known as Britain’s strictest headmistress, added: ‘There’s a lack of knowledge. For instance, it being a bad idea to give your toddler a phone to occupy him, that it will make it much more difficult for him to read later if you do that because a book cannot compete with a phone.
‘A phone has all sorts of flashing images and colours and adverts that pop up … so they break your attention span. A child from a very young age that’s had that, it’s then very hard for them to find a book that’s black and white, flat, interesting.’
Calling for ‘national campaigns’ on the issue, Miss Birbalsingh added: ‘I’d love it if things like “Don’t give your child a phone” were to become part of the national consciousness.’