The Government said this week that children under five should face tighter limits on screen-time, with ministers warning about the impact of excessive device use on development, attention and early learning. It is a very real problem and as a teacher I see the consequences all too often.
Pupils have told me that they spend seven hours a day at weekends on Twitch (“my parents haven’t got a clue, sir”); wake up at 4:30am to play Fifa with their cousins in Asia (later, they fall asleep in lessons); and deal with 200-250 Snap messages daily after school, often causing distress and drama.
There is a predictable cycle to stories like this. Guidelines are issued, and for a few days, we talk as if the answer lies just beyond reach. Then, the news agenda moves on. But the uncomfortable truth is that this cannot be outsourced to schools or solved by ministers. It is about what happens at home.
There is only so much schools can do once a child walks through the gates. By that point, habits are formed and attention spans shaped. Which is why, fundamentally, I think the problem is that children are not reading with parents or grandparents like previous generations did – nor seeing them do it themselves.
Reading is in crisis: disengagement is now a larger problem than the inability to decode what’s being read. Reading for pleasure is plummeting, particularly among younger children. That matters because reading underpins everything else; particularly comprehension, vocabulary and confidence across the curriculum.
We talk vaguely about “screen time”, as if all time on devices were the same. It’s not. Spend five minutes with teens and you quickly realise the landscape has shifted. Platforms like Twitch, TikTok and Snap are not just something they dip into. They are immersive, continuous, and designed to keep users there. It is not a fair fight with a book. As Jonathan Haidt argues in The Anxious Generation, we have allowed a generation to grow up in an always-on digital environment, not conducive to slower, deeper thinking.
Which is where parents – and grandparents – come in. An algorithm is not interested in your child’s literacy levels because its default is always more immersion. Saying no is rarely easy, but we can’t just expect schools to pick up the pieces.
If a child does not see reading happening at home, for its own sake, it is difficult to manufacture that enthusiasm in a classroom. You can teach reading, but not so easily the habit of it. Yes, the government’s intervention is welcome, but it’s no solution.
Parents and grandparents have to step up and stick to rules that they set. As a generation who grew up without screens, grandparents particularly can show just how great reading is and pass on the lessons they learned themselves. Otherwise, we will be back again in two years, asking why standards have slipped and what schools will do – and that’s not fair.
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