Commitments from senior committee presidents on Friday were reinforced less than 24 hours later when more than a dozen deputies attended a public meeting organised by a group of parents.
Some 250 people heard Dr Sanjiv Nichani, a consultant paediatrician at the Leicester Children’s Hospital in the University Hospitals of Leicester for the past 25 years, raise his concerns that children and teenagers were exhibiting symptoms such as communication problems, language delays, headaches and poor focus as a result of excessive smartphone use.
As well as this, he said MRI scans were detecting similar shifts in brain behaviour to those of someone with learning disorders such as autism.
He said smartphones were ‘poisoning’ children’s brains.
The meeting heard new Health & Social Care president George Oswald suggest taxing smartphones, comparing them to cigarettes.
‘Unless we turn this ship around, we’ve got real problems in the future,’ he said.
He invited his new Education counterpart to address the meeting too.
Fresh out of the classroom, having retired as a teacher after 30 years last week, Deputy Montague said that he had seen the impact of smartphones on local children but urged a degree of caution.
‘I’m not going to get defensive here, but if children go home and see people on screens all the time, what can teachers really do?’ he said.
‘Let’s also be aware that this is self-selecting audience. It’s one thing changing rules but we have to change norms of our culture as well. It’s good that we’re here and we’re getting really enthusiastic about this, but we need to be a little bit cautious.
‘Having been president for about 24 hours now, it is absolutely something that I know we will look at. We spoke with Mark Leadbeater [new Home Affairs president] about this yesterday, so it’s absolutely something that we on the political side will do as much as we can.’
Policy & Resources president Lindsay de Sausmarez attended as a parent of four, aged between six and 15.
‘So much of this resonates,’ she said.
‘We make a conscious effort to minimise screen time but it is really tough.
‘There is a lot of comfort that can be taken from knowing you’re not trying to solve this problem on your own. This can’t be addressed by any one person. It needs to come from the community, with support from relevant industries and government.
‘I was very encouraged to see our new presidents of the principal committees on the front page of the Press today, actively discussing the detrimental effects of smartphones.
‘We plan to get together later and see what our next potential steps are.’
Deputies Haley Camp and Sasha Kazantseva-Miller were sharing their concerns over a ‘silver-bullet’ response with 16-year-old student online safety ambassador, Amice Anderson.
‘We need to educate and empower children to have good digital literacy skills and habits,’ they said.
‘Ultimately, a smartphone ban doesn’t mitigate risk, it delays harm.’
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