Call For Change

The time is now to protect our children. As our Briefing Document shows, the evidence of harms is overwhelming. As a society we should not stand by to let this continue. We are calling for a smartphone regulatory framework that will protect our children.

SafeScreens, Teched Off and other campaign groups are calling on all political parties to commit to introduce promptly after the general election a new legal framework for regulating the access of children and young people to addictive-by-design smartphones and applications. All parties should be willing to commit their support for safeguarding the mental health, wellbeing and academic potential of current and future generations of children.

A smartphone regulatory framework should include at a minimum:

(a) a licensing or certification regime which restricts the sale, supply and marketing to children of smartphones and applications to those which are certified by an independent authority as meeting narrow statutory suitability and child safety conditions, and

(b) 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.

If you want to support this call there are two urgent things you can do today:

1) Use our template to send a single email to all of the main political party leaders and your MP

Download a template email here

2) Support this call by completing our form below to help us to evidence the strength of public feeling around this issue

The time is now to protect our children. As our Briefing Document shows, the evidence of harms is overwhelming. As a society we should not stand by to let this continue. We are calling for a smartphone regulatory framework that will protect our children.

Complete this form to add your support