Health Professionals For Safer Screens

Health Professionals for Safer Screens (HPFSS) is a fast-growing group of health and healthcare professionals founded by Dr Becky Foljambe earlier this year. Dr Foljambe is an NHS GP and passionate campaigner for safer device use in children. Members include Consultant Child Psychiatrists, Consultant Paediatricians, GPs, Nurses, Public Health Consultants, Social Workers, Dieticians, Speech and Language Therapists, Child Psychologists, and Psychotherapists. HPFSS work with leading academic researchers across the globe to understand the harms.

HPFSS’s position is that many health professionals in this country require no further evidence of the harmful impacts of these devices on children. The group is calling for the government to act based on the ‘precautionary principle’ and urgently introduce a regulatory framework for internet-enabled devices for children under 16 and launch a public health campaign around these devices to better inform parents and protect children.

Health Professionals for Safer Screens is an independent group supported by SafeScreens and fully endorses the SafeScreens legislative and regulatory proposals. Dr Becky Foljambe says, “Health professionals have stayed quiet for too long on this issue, and it is time to change this. If a device or its addictive use is being evidenced as causing harm to our children, then it is our job as doctors to act to prevent this and educate for the safer use and supply of these devices in the same way as we would for alcohol and smoking.

This is a modern-day impediment to the healthy development of our young, especially the most vulnerable. It is now our moral responsibility to change things for the better.

Contact HPFSS at [email protected] and www.healthprofessionalsforsaferscreens.org

Read HPFSS latest briefing document here