Former BBC Breakfast presenter Dan Walker has revealed he made his children sign up to a contract of behaviour before he allowed them their own mobile phone and regularly checks their content.
The broadcaster, 45, who now hosts Channel 5’s flagship news programme, told his kids Susanna, 15, Jessica, 13, and Joe, 11, it's a privilege to have a smartphone and "you lose it if you abuse it".
Dan, who is married to wife Sarah, told The Times : "We are strict,'' he said.
"When we got them their phones, we got them to sign up to [the contract and] we had a chat. The contract is . . . there are things we expect from you in terms of what you do with it and how you use it. If you cross the line, we will take it away for a period.''
The former Strictly Star said his kids were 'behind their friends' using apps like Instagram and only had phones when they started to walk back from secondary school on their own.
The dad also restricts device use from their bedrooms and insists phones are charged downstairs overnight.
But Walker's close monitoring over his children's phone access and content is fuelled by experiencing first hand the harm trolls can do as he admits to taking his families safety more serious than his own.
Dan added: “I often get threats of violence on social media… That is never nice. I have a family to protect and look after and I take their safety more seriously than I take my own."
He also says that the recent landmark inquest of school girl Molly Russell, in which a coroner ruled for the first time that that social media had contributed to the death of a child, is a powerful sign that schools should take steps such as 'suicide prevention lessons' to be open with kids around the subject.
Writing in his new book Standing on the Shoulder : Incredible Heroes and How They Inspire Us, he explains: ''It’s a subject I often think about with my own children.
''How do we best arm our kids to deal with the toxic landscape they sometimes have to live in? We need to teach our children to be resilient, to realise that it’s OK to feel stressed and anxious, that it’s normal to feel worried about an exam, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or what someone has said about you.''
In the book, which is published this week, Walker has interviewed three fathers who lost their daughters to suicide and are now walking across the UK to raise awareness of the issue.
Standing on the Shoulders: Incredible Heroes and How They Inspire Us published by Headline Publishing is out on October 13th.
