Emma Willis has told how she experienced “withdrawal and anxiety” when she gave up her phone for a TV experiment.
The presenter, known for fronting Love Is Blind: UK and The Voice UK, and her husband Matt Willis stopped using smartphones for 21 days along with pupils at a school in Essex for a new Channel 4 show.
She told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “I was very naive going into it, we handed our phones in, and we obviously needed some form of communication so we had a brick phone for three weeks.
“The first four days, genuinely, I had such major withdrawal and anxiety because I felt so out of control, because everything is on your phone.”
She said phones, containing social media accounts and various other apps, are “designed to keep you looking and scrolling up so much of your time”.
Willis added: “After I got over that period, it was liberating, and when we did finally get our phones back, I stayed off it.
“I kept my brick phone for another couple of days because I didn’t want to go back to how I had a relationship with it before.”
She also said she “kept the things that I need for day to day, life and admin” on her smartphone, and there is another device that she checks once a day for social media.
The show, Swiped: The School That Banned Smartphones, will air later this year and will see researchers at the University of York reveal the results of monitoring the behaviour of Year 8 students at The Stanway School in Colchester, Essex, and the presenting team.
Previously, MPs have urged the Government to consult on raising the age of digital consent from 13 to 16, and pushed for a consideration of a total ban on smartphones for under-16s, as well as a full statutory ban on mobile phones in schools.
The Department for Education has issued guidance, which is non-statutory, instructing headteachers on how to ban the use of phones during lessons and during breaks and lunch periods.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said in July that although he thinks the Government needs “to look again” at what content children are accessing online, he does not support “simply banning” phones for children under 16.
