Your Children Are Watching You Scroll: Here Is How to Build a Phone-Free Home Culture

This spring the UK government issued its first official screen time guidance for under-fives. Children younger than two should avoid screens altogether, except for shared activities that encourage interaction. Children aged two to five should keep total screen time below one hour a day, with none in the hour before bed. The guidance, developed with Children's Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza and paediatrician Professor Russell Viner, rested on a straightforward finding: long, solitary periods in front of a screen displace sleep, physical activity and the face-to-face interaction that young brains require.

The numbers behind it are difficult to look away from. Ninety-eight per cent of two-year-olds already watch screens every day. A quarter of parents of three-to-five-year-olds say they cannot control how much time their child spends on devices. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it a battle parents should not have to fight alone.

What the guidance does not address is the phone in the parent's hand.