If you want your kids to thrive this summer, don’t just turn off their phones – open your front door, too

Children playing at a summer school at Moor Park school near Ludlow, Shropshire, August 2025. Photograph: John Robertson/The Guardian

In books and movies that pack a wallop you will usually find a “charged object” – an item crucial to the plot and freighted with emotion. The slipper in Cinderella. The apple in Adam and Eve. And today, in the story of what has gone wrong with childhood: the smartphone.

It’s not that phones aren’t a real problem. We have all seen it. Kids glued to their phones in a restaurant. Kids glued to their phones at the bus stop. The other day I saw a girl swinging on a swing – the classic summer pastime – glued to her phone. And oh, the content! This study alone will give you pause: ParentsTogether Action reports that children see sex and drug content every few minutes on Snapchat. If only we could take away their phones, a happy childhood would be restored – or so it can seem.