How old is old enough to have your own mobile phone? For once, your children may be right that everyone else is getting them younger than you think.
New research from Ofcom has found that a fifth of three- and four-year-olds now have a phone of their own, and are already using them to watch streaming services, use social media and play games online.
This is not parents handing over their own phone to a toddler to amuse them briefly – much higher numbers (69%) of those aged three and four are regularly using phone handsets to go online, including on borrowed devices, according to the media regulator. But the finding that one in five had their own handset led the Children’s Commissioner for England to say this week that they should not have them at all. “Very young children do not need internet-enabled phones,” Dame Rachel de Souza told the Telegraph.
Anxiety about children’s exposure to technology is nothing new, but while most parents will grapple at some point with setting limits on phones, many will admit to letting even very young children use them from time to time. So how should parents navigate this often fraught territory? And what are toddlers using mobile phones for anyway?
Ofcom did investigate the latter question. Three- and four-year-olds may still be developing the dexterity to hold a pen, dress themselves or cut their food, but 92% of them watch video streaming platforms such as YouTube (across all devices), almost half send voice and video messages, 23% use social media apps or sites, 18% are playing games online and 11% have posted their own video streaming content.
Children of this age were more likely (51%) to use YouTube’s dedicated kids’ channel than the main site (31%), although a striking 38% had their own YouTube profile. Once there, as any parent who has lost a young child to Baby Shark or Peppa Pig knows, they like cartoons, animations, mini movies or songs.
Separate research from The Insights Family has found that the favourite YouTube channels of this age group are Blippi, a blue- and orange-clad actor whose videos about tractors and popsicles have earned him 17 million subscribers, and Ryan’s World, the phenomenally successful unboxing and educational site of now 11-year-old Ryan Kaji (34 million subscribers).
Many teachers will not need data to tell them of the ubiquity of phones among younger children and their potential impact. Nova Cobban, a former primary school teacher who worked with children aged five and six, says two things stood out about their tech use. “One was that children who were very young were talking about the fact they had seen things on YouTube – you knew that they were using it, that they coveted it, that they made fun of children that didn’t have access to that. So there was already a divisive element to it.”
Secondly, she says, “there were definitely times where I knew that those children who were talking about having access to gaming, for example, were quite tired and disconnected compared to those children who I knew did not have access to those things”.
Cobban, based in Bedfordshire, who is now a psychologist and the mother of a four-year-old, says she would never give her daughter a phone of her own at this age, though she does let her use one at times. But even when closely monitoring her child, she says: “I know when my daughter’s got on my phone she can easily go from watching something that I’m quite happy with, to five seconds later clicking on something and … going through to all kinds of different content.
“It’s tough for parents. We know how tough it is. And we know that five minutes of silence is nice sometimes.”
There are certainly some who think younger children shouldn’t have phones at all. De Souza’s comments echoed those of Amanda Spielman, the head of Ofsted, who said in January she didn’t think children should be given a phone too young, and was “always surprised” when primary-age children had phones. The World Health Organization (WHO) said in 2019 that children under two should not watch any screens, and under-fives should have no more than an hour of sedentary screen time. High levels of screen time have been linked to delayed development of children aged between two and five.
“One concern is that using screens to keep kids quiet is teaching them a kind of instant gratification, which really does form their brains,” says Ryan Lowe, who is a child and adolescent psychotherapist and spokesperson for the Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP). “Kids’ brains are plastic, and they will learn what they are taught at that time.” She is also concerned that too much early phone use “degrades the relationship with the adults that are looking after them at that point”.
However, there is no consensus on how to respond: the WHO advice was challenged by child development experts including the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which said the advice overlooked families raising children in cramped housing, for instance, without outdoor space to play. The UK government’s chief medical officers concluded in 2019 there was not enough research available to give guidance on how much screen time was best.
Jennifer Howze, editorial director of the parenting platform Netmums, agrees that economic factors play a part in the debate over phones. “Parents have certainly been affected by the cost of living, where they are working harder and trying harder to keep their families afloat. And so if they need their child to sit and play quietly for a bit while they work, that’s why they do it.
“It’s all too easy, to have this kneejerk reaction, thinking: ‘Oh, those horrible parents, what are they doing?’ When in fact, it’s a really complicated picture.”
Their members are well aware of the downsides of too much phone use, and shouldn’t be blamed for their prevalence, she says. When concerns arise about potential harms, “they tend to be laid squarely at the feet of parents, as if they’re not doing enough. As if parents themselves can hold back these social [changes].”
With phone use almost ubiquitous once children move to secondary school (Ofsted found that 98% of 12- to 15-year-olds have mobiles), it may be unrealistic to expect those a few years younger to have little contact with them.
And phone resources, of course, can be beneficial too, if children know how to use them appropriately. “We know that too much digital use for children, just as for everyone, is not ideal,” says Dr Pauldy Otermans, a senior lecturer in psychology at Brunel University London. “But I also think that no matter what we do, for the current generation as well as generations to come, we are living in a digital age. There’s no way around it. I think it’s our duty to teach children the best way possible to make use of digital tools.”
Otermans has an educational startup that, as well as training disadvantaged communities internationally, is developing an AI-based “learning buddy” app designed for children as young as four, particularly those with neurodiversities. Testing the app with young children revealed how digitally confident they were, says Otermans: “They found it easy. They knew what to press, they told me: ‘This button. No, it should be there, it should be red.’”
It also illustrated the difficulty in working out how to set limits. Despite much testing, she says: “We haven’t worked out yet the optimum time for kids to use the app before Teddy says: ‘Enough learning for today, I’ll see you tomorrow.’ That’s something we’re still looking into.”
