Never before has the warning been louder or clearer – our children are at risk every time they touch their phones.
A whistleblower from inside the world’s biggest social media company recently dished the dirt on their grubby tactics.
So we chatted to parenting expert Justin Coulson about how to protect children.
“One of the biggest challenges that we’ve got is that our kids want to be there because that’s where their friends are,” Coulson said of online forums.
“We know that this is bad for them. And yet it’s kind of where they need to be – so that they can be healthy and happy. And yet it is the great unhappiness machine.”
Coulson offered a set of rules – which are easy to write down but hard to enforce – for parents to follow to protect children.
“No phones in the bedroom, no phones in the bathroom, no phones at the dinner table, no phones when you’re hanging out with your friends.
“I encourage families to develop what I would call rituals of connection, that might be sitting around the dinner table with no devices, and connecting, talking, seeing each other, hearing each other valuing each other.”
