Winslet is right about social media ruining childhoods

"For families who feel that they are held hostage by the perils of the online world, for parents who wish they could still communicate with their teenagers... and for young people who have become addicted to social media and its darker sides."

- ANNE ATKINS

We are used to gushing tributes from actors accepting accolades, but not many as poignant as Kate Winslet’s in accepting her Bafta for TV drama I Am Ruth, the story of a mother and daughter navigating the perils of the online world.

I know all too well how Winslet feels: with a span of 20 years between our eldest and youngest five children, we’ve had to adjust pretty rapidly to unprecedented risks and dangers, even in the “age of innocence” before social media. Even before mobile phones were ubiquitous.

Such as... the time we were on holiday in rural Ireland. I gave our four pre-teens a packed lunch, told them to stick together and avoid water and come home when they’d had enough. Only three returned. We had an anxious few hours, not helped by the postmaster’s doom-laden: “No: not safe at all. A lassie went missing in Ireland… ooh, I’d say about 30 years ago.”

Admittedly we were both more liberal and at the same time stricter than other parents, in different ways: restricting TV viewing to Sundays, after dark, if we remembered. The warnings to our older four were all about strangers in parks or crossing the road, never social media. It didn’t exist. Their grandmother gave them a board game called “Stranger Danger” and taught them what we all taught children, then: don’t accept lifts or sweets.

The changes started in their teens. Some seemed positive. Our daughter suffered such severe mental illness that for a while she couldn’t leave the house: being online was the only social contact she had. It was arguably a lifeline… except for uncharted hazards.