'Impact of smartphones on children is so immense it's impossible to be safe'

MAKING smartphones safe for children is impossible, a campaigner warned yesterday.

- By Katie Harris Senior Political Correspondent

Actress Sophie Winkleman raised fears about the physical and mental impact of the devices on youngsters.

The mother of two, 44, who wants smartphones and social media banned for under-16s, was speaking at an event hosted by the Policy Exchange think tank yesterday.

She said: “The impact of smartphones on children’s mental and physical health is so immense and so multi-stranded that it’s actually impossible to make them safe.

“They're designed by geniuses to be unputdownable. Even if a child is only watching animal videos for three hours, they're stationary, isolated and passive. They're simply consuming content, open vessels for other people’s garbage, often for hours at a time. Not to mention pitiful prey to bad people pretending to be nine-year-old fellow animal fans.”