Paloma Faith: Why I’m becoming a member of 100,000 dad and mom who gained’t give their youngsters a smartphone | EUROtoday

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Paloma Faith has stated her eight-year-old has stopped begging her for a smartphone now she’s put in a landline that her little one can use to prank name her associates.

The singer and mother-of-two is one in every of a rising variety of celebrities who’ve at the moment put their identify to a 100,000-strong motion of fogeys dedicated to giving their youngsters a smartphone-free childhood.

Backing the marketing campaign, she stated: “I actually allowed my children to occasionally look at my smartphone and that was fine for a time as I’m a single mum, and sometimes needs must. But when I took it away, the difference was instant.

“They slept better, they were more focussed, more imaginative and much better company – no tantrums, no disasters, just a brilliant childhood. My eight-year-old was begging me for one over and over, and when I installed a landline she stopped entirely.

“Now she loves prank calling all my friends just as I did when I was eight. I’m glad she won’t be littered with all the superficial rubbish that a smartphone will bring in her teen years too.”

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The singer co-parents her two youngsters, aged eight and three, together with her ex-husband Leyman Lahcine. She joins Joe Wicks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jamie Redknapp and Sara Pascoe amongst others who’ve signed as much as restrict their youngsters’s smartphone use.

The pact commits households to delay giving their youngsters smartphones till a minimum of the age of 14 and social media until 16.

Over 100,000 folks have now signed up for the dedication, organised by campaigners from Smartphone Free Childhood.

According to analysis revealed by regulator Ofcom final yr, 24 per cent of five-to-seven-year-olds now personal a smartphone, whereas three-quarters use a pill.

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The variety of five-to-seven-year-olds who log on to ship messages or make voice or video calls has been rising – from 59 per cent in 2023 to 65 per cent in 2024.

The use of social media websites by youngsters can be rising, as is on-line gaming, Ofcom analysis discovered.

The authorities has requested the University of Cambridge to run a feasibility examine into the influence of smartphones and social media after MPs pushed for stronger regulation on smartphone use.

The Safer Phones Bill, introduced by Labour MP Josh MacAlister, had initially proposed elevating the digital age of consent from 13 to 16 however this has been watered right down to safe authorities help. Ministers have as an alternative dedicated to analysis the difficulty and report again.

Conservative MP Kit Malthouse, a former training secretary, accused the federal government of getting “dithered, diluted and capitulated” on the difficulty.

Daisy Greenwell, director of Smartphone Free Childhood, stated: “Over the last decade, childhood has changed dramatically due to the rise of smartphones, and it has fast become the defining parenting challenge of our time.

“Families have been put in an impossible position by the lack of regulation around Big Tech, forced to choose between either getting their kids a smartphone which they know to be harmful, or leaving them isolated the only one without.

“The overwhelming response to the Parent Pact shows just how many families are coming together to say ‘no’ to the idea that children’s lives must be mediated by Big Tech’s addictive algorithms.”