Working to end theScreen-Based childhood

Join us in campaigning to protect children from the harms of unregulated EdTech, and addictive-by-design smartphones

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our
campaigns

PUT THE BRAKES ON EdTech

Campaigning for EdTech to be the exception, not the norm

Our Proposals

  • Early Years and Primary Schools should be havens free from EdTech and personal devices
  • Secondary Schools must suspend the use of student facing EdTech, apps and personal devices until safety, privacy and net educational benefit is independently proven
  • Parents must have a statutory right to opt out of digital learning and homework materials
About The campaign

Roll back Smartphones

Campaigning for better legislation to protect children from addictive devices and harmful online content

Our Proposals

  • We are calling for a tobacco-style regulatory framework for smartphones, including prominent health warnings about excessive screen time
  • We want to see bell to bell statutory restrictions on smartphone use in schools
  • Our proposals include a licencing regime to create a new market for child-appropriate restricted smartphones and applications 
About The campaign

We overprotect kids in the real world and underprotect them online.

Jonathan Haidt, Social psychologist and author

About Us

We are a passionate team of grassroots campaigners who are deeply concerned about the ubiquitous use of smart devices in the lives of children and teenagers.

Launched in December 2022 we were the first UK organisation to call for regulatory action to protect children from addictive smartphones and smart devices.

We are a team of parents. We understand the issues faced by families up and down the country and we are proud to have launched a national conversation about the negative effects of smartphone use among children.

We’re also campaigning to end the invasion of unregulated, untested and unproven educational technology (EdTech) into our schools. EdTech should be the exception not the norm.

We run strategic legal and political campaigns for societal and legislative change and work with politicians of all parties and other public and private stakeholders for children, including teaching unions, other campaigners, the Children’s Commissioner and Government departments.

campaignPUT THE BRAKES ON EdTech

Children and parents are the key stakeholders for education initiatives, yet the voices of families are largely unrepresented

We are extremely concerned about the rapid proliferation of smart devices in educational settings and the fact their use has never been properly risk assessed for children, despite a growing body of evidence that screen use is negatively impacting academic attainment across schools and socio-economic groups.

Device schemes in schools rarely offer a genuine opt out for parents, even though devices are implicated in bullying, access to inappropriate content, poorer educational outcomes, elevated unhealthy levels of screen time and privacy and data security issues.

Our Campaign

  • We want to challenge the prevailing assumption that everything digital is good and necessarily better for a child’s education
  • We are calling for a moratorium on pupil facing EdTech until an independent risk / benefit analysis of tech-based learning has been completed
  • We believe there must be a statutory right for parents to opt out of digital homework and learning materials 


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There’s clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning.

Karolinska Institute, Sweden

campaignRoll back Smartphones

We are calling for a smartphone regulatory framework to protect our children

We are campaigning for the introduction of a new legal framework to regulate children’s access to addictive-by-design smartphones and applications.

A 2024 report by the Education Select Committee on the impact of screen time on childrens’ education and well-being echoed our campaign goals showing that the evidence of harm is overwhelming. As a society we must not stand by and let this continue.

We are calling on the Government to act upon the recommendations in this report to safeguard the mental health, wellbeing and academic potential of current and future generations of children.

Our Campaign

  • A licensing regime to restrict the sale, supply and marketing to children of smartphones and applications to those which are independently certified as meeting narrow statutory suitability and child safety conditions.
  • A prohibition on the sale, supply and marketing to children of addictive-by-design unrestricted smartphones and applications including social media.
  • This regime should apply to all children in the UK until they reach the end of Secondary School Key Stage 4, with the effect of excluding unrestricted smartphones from all primary and secondary schools.
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Time for
Action

If you feel strongly about the issues we are campaigning on and want to keep up to date with progress or see how you can help, sign up to our mailing list:

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