Parents who use phones excessively may struggle to set screen time rules for their children, the Children’s Commissioner for England has suggested.
Dame Rachel de Souza has called on tech companies to fund “parental education” to help families understand what young people are seeing online.
She told the Commons Education Select Committee that parents in the country need to have a conversation about their “own addictions”.
Dame Rachel told MPs: “You see parents with kids using their phones at dinner time. We can’t say, ‘I’m going to ban you from having this’ – well we can – but then act as adults in a totally uncontrolled way scrolling at night.”
Her comments come after schools in England have been given Government guidance intended to stop the use of mobile phones during the school day.
Dame Rachel told MPs on Tuesday that young people are seeing “horrendous things” online and they want to be able to talk to their parents about it.
Young people told the commissioner’s office that they want “boundaries around screen time” and they want their parents to take away their phones before bed, Dame Rachel suggested.
The Children’s Commissioner for England said: “I think as parents we need to – and as adults – we need to wake up here and also watch our own behaviours.”
She told MPs that no technology in the bedroom was a “good piece of advice”.
Esther Ghey, the mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey, is campaigning for an age limit for smartphone usage and stricter controls on access to social media apps.
