Kirstie Allsopp has hit out at ‘preposterous’ parents who give their young children mobile phones.
The TV presenter, 50, hit the headlines in 2018 when she claimed she had smashed her children’s iPads because they were spending too much time on them while on a family holiday in Devon.
Kirstie, who shares sons Bay Atlas, born in 2006, and Oscar Hercules, born in 2008 with her partner Ben Andersen, has now criticised parents for giving their kids mobile phones.
In her column for the Mail on Sunday, the Location, Location, Location presenter said that she was stunned when it was recently revealed that one third of children own a mobile phone by the age of six.
The Ofcom figures also found that by age 11, 90 per cent own phones, and by 15, almost every single one will have a mobile.
She said the report was “truly disturbing”, and said she refused to cave into her children's’ demands for smartphones until they turned 13.
“I have huge sympathy for every parent waging a war against smartphones. I think the idea of giving one of these things to a child (and, personally, I think ten is the very minimum age) is preposterous,” Kirstie fired.
She said parents across the UK were “handing our children over to Big Tech”, and confessed she was worried about kids being exposed to the “social pressures” having a phone will bring.
Kirstie said her eldest son Bay got a mobile phone when he was 13, and her youngest Oscar received one at the same age.
She said there are “strict rules” attached to having a phone, such as leaving them in the kitchen overnight, and not being allowed to have them in their bedrooms, as well as having ‘phone-free days’.
Kirstie said she keeps track of what her kids are doing on their phones, as she knows their access codes, so can “pick them up at any point and look at what they've been doing”.
However, she’s adamant her kids will not spend “too much time inside, scrolling on their phones” and is keen to avoid her teenagers developing “fear of missing out” when they see what others are up to online.
