It is a very modern dilemma. Should you give in to pressure and give your child a smartphone, or keep them away from the devices as long as possible?
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00:00 Ofcom say that nearly a quarter of UK 5-7 year olds now have their own smartphone.
00:10 Social media use also rose in that age group over the last year, with nearly 2 in 5 using
00:15 messaging service WhatsApp, despite its minimum age of 13.
00:20 High profile cases like the tragic murder of Brianna Gay led to calls for a curb to
00:25 children's access to social media apps, and there is real concern for the mental health
00:29 and wellbeing of young people.
00:34 Ministers are now considering banning the sale of smartphones to children under the
00:37 age of 16, after a number of polls had shown significant public support for such a measure.
00:44 Social media platforms will now be required to introduce robust age checking measures,
00:49 including the use of IDs such as passports, to protect children from harmful content.
00:54 The new draft legislation published by regulator Ofcom, but does it go far enough?
01:00 Parents of children who died after exposure to harmful online content have described the
01:04 proposed new rules as insufficient.
01:08 It's a very modern dilemma.
01:10 Should you give in to pressure and give your child a smartphone, or keep them away from
01:14 the devices as long as possible?
01:18 We'll talk to experts about the danger of online time, to parents and teachers who describe
01:22 today's classroom challenges, and get some tips from Britain's strictest mum.
01:27 You're very good at dusting, sweeping.
01:33 We'll also talk to Joanne Hargreaves-Doherty, whose son James died by suicide after a series
01:38 of online threats.
01:40 He actually used social media and took a photograph of the night and actually posted, I think
01:47 it was on Snapchat, and actually said goodnight to the world and then hung himself.
02:04 Should there be tougher restrictions for children's use of phones and the internet?
02:08 Rishi Sunak seems to think so.
02:10 According to reports, the PM is allegedly in the process of drawing up new rules which
02:14 could see under-16s banned from buying smartphones and have their access to sites like Facebook
02:19 and Instagram restricted.
02:21 The Mirror is reporting that parents are currently being consulted on the plans, which they say
02:25 will be unveiled in a matter of weeks.
02:27 It comes after a survey for the charity Parentkind last month found 58% of parents of school-aged
02:33 children think smartphones should be banned for under-16s.
02:36 The reports follow calls from the mother of murdered teenager Brianna Jai to better regulate
02:41 young people's use of online platforms, after it was discovered her daughter's teenage killers
02:46 had accessed the dark web.
02:47 And from October last year, the online safety bill is now law.
02:50 Its purpose is to suppress or record a wide range of speech and media deemed harmful,
02:55 but some parents argue it doesn't go far enough to protect children from online dangers.
03:00 But what do you think?
03:01 What age is the right age for kids to be online or get smartphones?
03:04 And how much time is too much for children to be spending with screens?
03:07 My first time getting a phone was when I was about 13 years old, but I barely even used
03:15 WhatsApp.
03:17 I don't think it should be appropriate for kids, especially teenagers, because these
03:24 generations these days, it's quite, I don't know, concerning.
03:29 Parents need to take a lot more responsibility in terms of checking and understanding what
03:32 their children are on, in terms of both WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, the lot.
03:36 If we look at a lot of the data related to that, we find that there's quite a bit of
03:41 data linked to mental health, particularly with young girls, but that's not to say that
03:45 boys are excluded from that by any means.
03:47 WhatsApp is just your contact number, so as long as you've got, it's just people that
03:52 you know, it's probably not too deep.
03:54 Social media is quite a tricky one with kids.
03:56 I think it's, there should be more protections in place, potentially.
04:02 You can't exactly stop them, I don't think, because it's such an integral part of the
04:06 world nowadays.
04:07 I would think when they go to senior school, so 11, 12.
04:17 I think I'm younger than that a bit, pushing the boat out a bit.
04:21 15 or 16, because that's when they're very getting social and active with their friends,
04:27 freshly shy people and disability people.
04:31 Communication's becoming a lost skill.
04:34 Because kids now writing text, it's kind of like, well, ask them to read Tolstoy or
04:42 Charles Dickens, they couldn't do that, could they?
04:44 Not anymore.
04:45 They'd have smiley faces at the end of it.
04:48 I personally would say the amount of time you spend on your homework, you can spend
04:54 on your screen.
04:55 So if you don't do your homework, you don't get your screen time.
05:00 Three or two hours, maybe, because it counts on, so they won't be saying the screen monsters
05:05 like my brother was.
05:07 I think platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, things like that, where these apps are a bit
05:15 more visual, and I think kids are a bit more at risk.
05:18 Same with TikTok, I think the age should definitely be higher, that should be going in another
05:23 direction.
05:24 I think 16's a good age for those platforms.
05:26 So I just don't want more mingling with people, but it can, once they mature, they know what's
05:32 good and what's bad.
05:33 But yeah, I understand the WhatsApp thing, I think, it's obviously, it's encrypted.
05:37 My name's Joanne Hargreaves-Doherty, and my son was James Hargreaves-Doherty, who unfortunately
05:43 took his own life at the age of 16 after being pursued through messages on an Xbox.
05:52 He played ice hockey for Wales.
05:55 He was a lifeguard.
05:56 He had all his future ahead of him.
06:00 He passed all his nine GCSEs, which at the time, I think he felt that low.
06:04 He actually wrote in his suicide note that he didn't think he'd passed all his GCSEs,
06:07 but he actually came out with all nine.
06:10 He had actually been for an interview at the North School College down the road at Fleetwood,
06:16 and waiting for his exam results, that's the possible line he was going to go down.
06:20 But obviously, unfortunately, things ended the way they did.
06:27 James unfortunately left school, got a little bit on the bored side, contacted some friends
06:33 that he was friends with in school, or supposedly his friends, who introduced him to other people
06:38 that he didn't really know, but obviously became friendly, and he thought they were
06:43 his friends.
06:44 Unfortunately, James got into a little bit of trouble with them financially, and they
06:49 were threatening him and gave him a two-day threat in which to pay this money that he
06:52 owed them.
06:53 And James unfortunately hung himself after the two-day threat.
06:58 They gave him two days in which to pay the money, which to me is basically threatening
07:03 somebody.
07:04 And if not, then something else was going to materialise if he didn't pay this money
07:09 back within two days.
07:11 So basically, in James's brain, he had two days, and his two days was up.
07:14 And the only way to get rid of not receiving any more messages was obviously, in his mental
07:20 state at the time, was if he's not here, no one's coming.
07:24 I didn't know at the time that, well, until after James had actually died, that you could
07:29 actually pursue somebody through text messages, through an Xbox.
07:32 I've never played a gaming console in my life, and I didn't realise.
07:36 And you could speak to people, obviously, wherever in the world, through headphones,
07:42 chatting through a game, but I didn't actually realise you could actually use it as a way
07:46 of finding people and messaging them.
07:51 It was only after James had died that his friends came round, and it was them that actually
07:54 found the information that was hidden somewhere within that Xbox.
08:00 I think the problem with children this day and age is they sit in the bedroom, they're
08:03 closed in all the time, they're playing on the Xbox, and if people are pursuing you not
08:07 only with your phone but by a computer or a huge TV and you've got messages coming through,
08:12 then to me, children obviously need to learn how to talk or come out of the bedrooms, because
08:16 obviously this is the way that the world is now, that kids are in close to the bedrooms
08:20 all the time, where parents don't know what they're doing up there.
08:22 I never had any idea in the world that he was in any kind of trouble whatsoever.
08:27 He was a lifeguard at the YMCA down the road, he was still working.
08:31 He went to work the night that he took his own life.
08:34 Never showed anybody that he was under any kind of stress whatsoever.
08:39 The night that James, well the early morning that James took his own life, he actually
08:44 used social media and took a photograph of the night and actually posted, I think it
08:51 was on Snapchat, and actually said goodnight to the world and then hung himself.
08:57 Which to me, I think that was James' way of closing it, getting rid of it, because he
09:02 had nothing else he could do.
09:06 There is, like I say, a few people I have met within my group who have lost children
09:10 through bullying through social media.
09:12 It's alright saying you're going to take the phone off a child when they go to bed, but
09:16 if they can pursue you through an Xbox, you're not getting away with it, which is like you
09:19 say is social media.
09:22 How do you get away from social media?
09:23 I suppose if you put your laptop on, you can pick up everything that you've missed.
09:27 If your parents have got your phone and you're upstairs on a laptop doing your homework,
09:31 I'm presuming they can still obviously communicate with these people via a laptop, even if your
09:37 parents have taken the phones off you.
09:38 So to me, it's how do you totally take it away from the children?
09:45 There was no need for him to do what he did, but obviously in his state of mind, it was
09:49 the only way out, which like you say, that's a hard bit with children in this day and age.
09:52 How do you tell them that no problem can't be resolved?
09:59 They haven't got the ability nowadays to actually talk and interact with adults even.
10:06 I think they're all closed in with that phone.
10:09 The first thing kids do in the morning is they get up, they get the phone, they're on
10:12 the bus, it's a constant thing that is in their hands.
10:16 So like you say, at what age do you give a child a phone?
10:20 To me, if you haven't got a phone when you go over to high school, you're going to be
10:24 bullied in the first place.
10:26 You've got to have that phone or you're not in with society.
10:31 It's wrong.
10:32 Social media has taken over the whole concept of the world to me.
10:37 It's there.
10:38 When James died, basically the police are trained to deal with people who've just lost
10:43 them to suicide.
10:44 And unfortunately, the day that James died, the police came and told me that James was
10:47 still hanging where he was and that somebody would come contact me later on.
10:52 And you are left abandoned, you're on your own.
10:55 There's no information, there's no leaflets, there's nowhere for you to turn to.
11:00 Since then, I decided that I would open a bereavement group on the Foul Coast for people
11:05 bereaved to suicide.
11:06 Because at the time James died, the nearest place I could go to was Kendal or Bolton.
11:10 Now, if I set off on that journey, I would never have made it home.
11:13 Because to go there and speak about James and drive there, I think I'd have took myself
11:18 off the road on the way home.
11:19 So my aim of when I opened a charity in memory of James was to help people who have lost
11:27 people to suicide.
11:29 Over the four years that the group's been running, because I had to be bereaved for
11:32 three years before I could open a bereavement group, I've come across people who have also
11:38 lost children in the same, not necessarily the same way as James, through the threats,
11:42 but through bullying in a different angle.
11:45 But it all comes down to, like you say, social media.
11:49 They can say what they want, do they mean, and they can delete things.
11:52 And I do feel like it's getting worse rather than better.
12:04 WhatsApp is sending a message to parents through reducing the age, saying that this is a safe
12:08 app for those who are aged 13 and over.
12:11 So we think it's tone deaf, but it's also, you know, it's negligent.
12:15 They're not giving any information about how they're going to protect all the new users
12:19 on the site, or how they're actually going to enforce their own rules.
12:23 Daisy and her friend Claire found themselves concerned about the online safety of their
12:27 children, but they didn't expect the local WhatsApp group for parents they started to
12:31 attract thousands of members in a matter of months.
12:34 Since starting smartphone-free childhood, they've spoken to countless concerned parents
12:38 and many experts who say the harms to children of early internet and smartphone use are multifaceted.
12:43 It ranges from, you know, just a very basic sleep disruption.
12:48 Kids are up all night on their class WhatsApp group, WhatsAppping, and teachers saying kids
12:51 are coming in exhausted, their mood is awful, like they can't concentrate.
12:55 To bullying.
12:56 Most bullying happens online now, cyber bullying.
12:59 So people, you know, kids that age aren't that good at navigating these issues, you
13:04 know, social interactions online.
13:05 So there's a lot of bullying that goes on there.
13:07 Groomings.
13:08 Kids can be added to a group without their permission.
13:10 There could be, you know, anyone on that group, and they won't necessarily know, they won't
13:16 necessarily be who they say they are.
13:17 They have said that they're putting in place safety measures to protect users, including
13:22 protecting young people from seeing explicit images.
13:26 Are they doing enough?
13:27 It's definitely a step in the right direction.
13:29 And it's great that they're doing anything.
13:31 But it definitely doesn't go far enough.
13:34 Like these are the brightest minds in Silicon Valley, these huge tech companies.
13:38 They could protect our children more.
13:39 Are you happy with what has been agreed in the online safety bill, what's been put in
13:44 place?
13:45 We think it's great, but there's so much more that needs to be done.
13:49 And you know, it feels to us like the tide is really turning.
13:51 People are starting to recognise that this, you know, this is a big problem, and we need
13:55 to do something about it.
13:56 And it feels like government is now starting to listen and figure out what they can do
14:01 beyond the Online Safety Act.
14:03 We chose not to ban mobile phones, but instead restricted the policy in terms of the usage.
14:09 And so although they have the phones on them, they can't be seen or heard.
14:13 More recently, we've looked at how we can restrict phone use during the school day.
14:18 And what we'd hope is that will be mirrored at home, especially when it comes to sleeping
14:22 at night and being able to switch that phone off and actually get a good night's sleep.
14:28 In some cases, they use their phone to pay for the bus fare.
14:31 So it was practical for us to, although restrict the phone during the school day, allow them
14:37 to keep it for the travel to school and back.
14:41 Well, I feel like mobile phones can be used quite a lot, you know, to research and to
14:48 find out things in lesson.
14:51 Also for homework, quite a lot of it, you know, you can do your research on your phone.
14:57 It's easier than going up to computers or anything like that.
15:01 But they can cause lots of upset, you know, obvious reasons of dangerous things on phones
15:09 as well.
15:10 It can be quite dangerous.
15:13 I agree with James.
15:14 I agree that there are obviously negative sides, like the filters and stuff.
15:20 And we don't really need that false sense of beauty.
15:24 But there's also at school, we have a pupil bulletin where we have our room changes.
15:29 And if we forget a room change or an important notice, we can't go on our phone to double
15:34 check what that important notice was.
15:36 I do think mobile phones, there are many advantages and disadvantages to having them.
15:42 As like, if you people who were to have them, like Hannah said, that if you don't feel safe
15:50 going to a teacher about something, you could always go like talk like a textual parent.
15:55 I mean, obviously, I saw this directive which came out from the government back in February.
16:00 Basically saying that mobile phones shouldn't be allowed in schools.
16:04 I mean, I must say initially that I think in many ways that this announcement and this
16:08 directive is a bit of an unentity because in my experience in schools, that's what the
16:13 policy was.
16:14 It's common sense.
16:15 It's something schools are doing anyway.
16:16 And so I do think in many ways, it's a point scoring because it looks like the government
16:19 are cracking down on disruption in schools.
16:22 But yeah, there's no classroom I've ever been in where a teacher will knowingly allow kids
16:27 to be out on their mobile phones.
16:30 It was a big area of conflict.
16:31 I think mobile phones compared to other things, when it came to confiscating things, was always
16:35 the area where there was the biggest chance of a flare up or a conflict with the students
16:40 because I think mobile phones are so personal to them.
16:42 And indeed, there probably is personal information on this.
16:45 So unlike maybe a pair of trainers or a jacket, if you ever had to confiscate something, mobile
16:49 phones was the biggest one which they didn't want to hand over.
16:52 Do you think you spend too much time online on your phones?
16:56 Yeah, yeah, I do.
16:57 I read a lot on my phone.
16:59 Instead of coming on social media, I just spend a lot of time on my phone.
17:03 I do spend a lot of time.
17:05 Any self-jokes?
17:06 Yeah, as well.
17:07 Yeah, I think we're all sort of guilty of overusing it.
17:12 And it's quite easy.
17:13 It's an easy stimulus, isn't it?
17:15 If you've got five minutes extra time, you don't think of, well, I don't think of doing
17:18 something productive.
17:19 You think, oh, I can just go on my phone for a bit.
17:21 So I think it's a bit of a habit that everybody has.
17:25 Yeah.
17:26 Sometimes I do think I take a bit too much.
17:27 But then there's the days where I just have a break.
17:33 Sometimes but other days I won't.
17:34 I'll spend less than an hour on my phone.
17:36 So it's a bit of a odd one, right?
17:40 Because often I do have days where I spend ages on my phone, ages scrolling through Instagram.
17:46 But I also have some days where I'll probably, might not even open social media once.
17:53 What I would say, though, and obviously as a teacher, as an experienced teacher, we had
17:58 the discretion to, if you wanted the kids to get mobile phones out, we could.
18:02 Because actually it could be a really good learning tool.
18:04 I mean, a lot of the things we did were possibly based on independent learning.
18:09 You want the kids to research things for themselves, find things out for themselves.
18:13 If you couldn't get a computer room, at their fingertips, the kids have got a really useful
18:17 learning tool which they could find things out from.
18:21 And when we did field trips, that sort of thing, again, always they could use it to
18:24 get video, they could use it to get photographs.
18:27 For a long time, we did everything we could as a school to make sure that mobile phones
18:32 could be used in a school environment.
18:35 And we see the value in how you can use it in a range of subjects.
18:39 And there are subjects that are disadvantaged if you don't have a mobile phone.
18:43 Yes, there is a place for mobile phones in a school environment.
18:48 But without mobile phones, what are the kids to do?
18:51 Well, self-confessed super strict mum, Alina Leeming, thinks she has just the answer.
18:57 My name is Alina and I'm a mum to two children who are age six and five.
19:04 And they have been doing chores since they were about three.
19:10 And they quite like doing chores, really.
19:14 And they enjoy some chores more than others.
19:18 You like cleaning the dryer.
19:22 And you're quite good at recycling.
19:25 They make their bed on a daily basis.
19:29 They can strip their beds and bring down the washing and they can put it in the washing
19:33 machine.
19:34 They can take it out to the dishwasher.
19:36 They can set the table.
19:40 They can move up.
19:43 And they're not there yet with the floors.
19:45 They can't mop the floors yet.
19:47 You're very good at dusting.
19:49 So some people might be shocked at the idea that I don't allow my children to have horrible
19:54 sweets, not even as a treat.
19:56 Our treats are quite different.
19:57 And they don't necessarily get treats before they do chores.
20:03 There's no reward at the end of doing chores.
20:07 I think it's quite normal for them to do it as a part of their day.
20:11 Get up, make the bed and help around the house rather than...
20:15 So they're exceptionally good.
20:18 They get to watch TV on a Sunday or when they're off school or during holidays, maybe one extra
20:23 day or we take them to the playground.
20:26 But we don't make any kind of big deal out of it and treat it as a reward for doing something.
20:33 They're quite happy doing the chores.
20:38 And as they get older, they increase.
20:41 Clive recently started helping out with cooking.
20:43 So you're quite good at peeling carrots and you started doing potatoes.
20:48 And maybe next year we'll progress to something like chopping vegetables and things like that,
20:52 which Clive is quite keen to do as well.
20:58 Now here's cybersecurity expert and owner of Mental Theft, Paul Newton, with some tips
21:03 on internet safety.
21:04 Mate, this bothers me.
21:06 Kids and teenagers understand apps and technology before we even get a look at it.
21:11 If something launches well, they've got it in their hands and they're using it straight
21:14 away.
21:15 Now the problem then is that they know how to bypass things.
21:18 They know how to get past age restrictions.
21:20 They know how to make friends on there quicker than I do.
21:23 Then you get, if you're making friends with people that aren't actually your friends in
21:26 real life, how do you know who they are?
21:29 How do you know who they really are?
21:31 If they're getting information from your social media, for example, Snapchat, Facebook, things
21:36 like that, there's ways of seeing people's actual geographic location through those apps.
21:42 So if you've made a friend with somebody that you've never met in real life, they may be
21:45 stalking you in the real world and you've got no idea who they are.
21:49 I'll give you a great example here.
21:51 Snapchat can be used for a lot of nefarious things.
21:54 One of the things that I really dislike on it is if there's a group of people in a chat
21:59 and one of your friends bring somebody else into that group, that person can now see loads
22:04 of details about you and they can see where you are if you haven't set up your settings
22:09 properly.
22:10 Okay, so that's the first thing I'm going to say.
22:12 If you're in an age where you love Snapchat and you use it a lot, please make all your
22:16 settings so that people can't see your location.
22:18 They can't see hidden information about you.
22:21 This is the stuff a scammer will use to either find you or break into your stuff or even
22:26 ransom you and your knowledge to your parents.
22:30 So please just check your settings.
22:32 Make sure it's all locked down that unless you're an actual friend with a real life person
22:36 that you know, they can't see anything about you.
22:41 Something I'm really worried about as parents, we're protective of our kids and I understand
22:47 that.
22:48 Okay.
22:49 But we have to kind of release them a bit more.
22:52 These kids are clever enough that if I put in a load of security measures that make it
22:56 annoying to use something, they'll find a way to bypass my security measures.
23:01 However, if we can teach them, we trust them.
23:04 We're with them.
23:05 If something completely and utterly screws up, we'll back them and we'll cover them.
23:10 Okay.
23:11 If we can get that understood by all generations, and I'm now even talking about your parents
23:15 and your grandparents, okay, because sometimes they'll make mistakes and then they'll panic
23:19 about telling you because they don't want to look silly or stupid.
23:22 If we can get rid of the embarrassment of, I might have been scammed, then we've got
23:27 much more chance of winning this fight.
23:30 So start treating your teenage kids like they're grown adults where this is concerned, because
23:35 we have to give them the freedom.
23:36 Otherwise they're going to break it anyway.
23:39 We give them the freedom.
23:40 We give them the knowledge.
23:41 We teach them as much as we can.
23:43 And then we say, and if it ever does mess up, you come to me and I will help you out
23:48 of this.
23:48 [ Silence ]