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Safer Screens for Children | Health Professionals Unite
📱 Health experts collaborating to reduce screen harm for kids
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29/10/2026

Nine million young people. 121 reviews. What does the evidence tell us about digital technology and children’s health?

A major new three-paper series in The Lancet Group, Digital Determinants of Health, examines how digital environments shape health and why protecting children and young people must become a public health priority.

An umbrella review drawing on 121 reviews and covering approximately 9 million people under 25 found consistent associations between digital media use and adverse outcomes, including mental health difficulties, sleep problems and reduced physical activity.

The series raises a question that goes beyond screen time alone.

What responsibility should technology companies bear for the health consequences of the environments they create?

The authors highlight the role of digital design, commercial business models and inadequate governance in shaping health risks.

Their recommendations include mandatory health-risk assessments before digital products reach the market, stronger corporate accountability and international standards for protecting health.

For Health Professionals for Safer Screens, these findings reinforce a central concern: responsibility for protecting children cannot rest solely with parents, teachers or individual clinicians.

As health professionals, we are increasingly concerned about the cumulative impact of children’s digital environments on their physical health, development and wellbeing.

Digital technology can offer genuine benefits. But those benefits must be considered alongside the evidence of potential harm, with children’s health and safety embedded in decisions about design, access and use.

We need to move from responding to harm to preventing it.

26/10/2026

What happens to the brain when children write by hand rather than type?

As educational technology becomes increasingly embedded in classrooms, neuroscience is providing important insights into the value of handwriting.
Research led by Professor Audrey van der Meer at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, published in Frontiers in Psychology, examined brain activity during handwriting and typing.

Using high-density EEG recordings, researchers found that handwriting produced more elaborate patterns of brain connectivity than typing, particularly across networks associated with learning and memory.

The findings highlight the important role of movement and sensory feedback in handwriting, which help create the complex patterns of brain connectivity associated with learning and memory. They reinforce the value of preserving handwriting as an essential part of education, rather than routinely replacing it with typing.

So why are we increasingly replacing handwriting with screens in classrooms?

Speaking on Sky News, HPFSS founder Dr Becky Foljambe called for educational technology to be proven beneficial for children’s learning and safe for their health, particularly when traditional methods such as reading physical books and writing with pen and paper are available.

Becky also highlighted the importance of considering screen exposure throughout a child’s day, including time spent on devices both at school and at home.

As health professionals, we believe technology should not automatically replace established educational practices without robust evidence of its benefits and consideration of its potential impact on children’s health and development.

Handwriting is not an outdated skill. It is an important part of learning that deserves protecting.

Research: Van der Weel & Van der Meer (2024), Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity, Frontiers in Psychology.

22/10/2026

Is screen-free education becoming a privilege?

While some of Britain’s most prestigious schools return to pen and paper, children in less affluent settings are becoming increasingly reliant on educational technology.

In a powerful article for the New Statesman, Dr Becky Foljambe, GP and founder of HPFSS, warns:

“In underprivileged schools there’s been mission creep – tech replacing teachers.”
“Posh schools are becoming analogue.”

The implications for inequality are deeply concerning. Are our most vulnerable children being handed devices when what they really need is individual, face-to-face support?

Becky also raises concerns about screens in nurseries, describing enormous screens playing Bluey or baby yoga, and the potential implications for early language development.

Even parents embracing the growing middle-class trend towards screen-free childhoods may be unaware of how much screen exposure their children experience in educational settings.

Parents are pushing back.
Becky describes a growing “revolt” among families who are “sick of fighting a losing battle”, expressing alarm at schools “thrusting an iPad into the hands of small child as if it’s a Christmas present.”

The contradiction extends beyond schools. A September 2026 Ipsos poll found that the vast majority of 18–34-year-olds were taking steps to limit their own screen use, while digital technology remains embedded in children’s education.
The article also highlights the open letter signed by more than 150 healthcare professionals calling for urgent government scrutiny of EdTech.

With nearly one million children reportedly spending almost every lesson on screens, and approximately £900 million spent annually on EdTech, the need for independent evaluation of its benefits and potential health risks is pressing.

Children’s access to healthy, developmentally appropriate education must never depend on privilege.

Thank you to the New Statesman for giving these concerns a platform.

Read the full article via the link in our bio.

15/10/2026

EdTech has become embedded in our schools without adequate evaluation of its impact on children’s health and development. It’s time for the Government to take stock.

Speaking to Sky News, Dr Sanjiv Nichani, consultant paediatrician and member of Health Professionals for Safer Screens (HPFSS), calls for urgent government scrutiny of the growing reliance on screens in education.

He also raises an important concern: parents are increasingly frustrated that they have had little or no say in the rollout of EdTech in their children’s schools.

When screen use becomes normalised throughout the school day, those habits can follow children home, adding to their overall screen exposure.

As we’ve learnt with smartphones and social media, technology is not always what it is promised to be. EdTech must be subject to the same rigorous scrutiny as anything else affecting children’s health.

Following the open letter by Safescreens and signed by more than 150 clinicians, including HPFSS members, we are calling for evidence-based decisions that put children’s health, development and learning first.

Our children deserve better than an experiment without adequate safeguards.

14/10/2026

From the front page of The Times to BBC News, the health impact of screens in schools has become a major national news story.

The BBC coverage follows an open letter organised by Health Professionals for Safer Screens and SafeScreens, signed by more than 150 clinicians and sent to Education Secretary Lucy Powell and Health Secretary Yvette Cooper. The letter raises serious concerns about the growing reliance on educational technology in schools and the potential consequences for children’s eyesight, speech, language and development.

The clinicians are calling for proper health scrutiny of EdTech before procurement, evidence-based guidance on safe daily screen exposure and specific protections for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Speaking to BBC News, HPFSS founder and NHS GP Dr Becky Foljambe explains why clinicians are increasingly concerned about short-sightedness and the loss of vital opportunities for face-to-face conversation and language development.

This is not about rejecting technology in education. It is about ensuring that children’s health and developmental needs are central to decisions about its use.

Thank you to BBC News and Ellie Price for bringing these concerns to a national audience.

Children’s health must come first.

07/10/2026

From policy discussions to clinical debate and NHS communities, it has been a busy few weeks for HPFSS.

At the Labour Party Conference, HPFSS member Dr Lauren Bull took part in a roundtable on delivering effective social media age restrictions, alongside voices from politics, education, academia and children’s safety.

Discussion went beyond age alone to consider platform features and functions, effective enforcement and the rapidly developing role of AI, as well as opportunities for future research collaboration. Lauren is pictured with Esther G**y of Brianna G**y’s Legacy and Ros McNeil, Assistant General Secretary of the NEU.

Meanwhile, Dr Becky Foljambe, GP and Founder of HPFSS, took part in ACAMH’s recorded debate on whether social media should be banned for under-16s.

The event followed the 2025 ACAMH journal debate, in which Becky and HPFSS co-founder Arabella Skinner contributed the case for a precautionary approach and a statutory social media ban for under-16s.

Becky positioned a ban as an essential part of a joined-up public health response, alongside safety-by-design measures and greater platform responsibility, repeatedly making the point that social media companies “cannot be trusted” to protect children themselves.
And did the debate shift opinion?

Support for a ban rose from 33.3% before the debate to 45% afterwards.

In Manchester, HPFSS member Dr Emily Sehmer took HPFSS resources directly into the NHS community at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust’s Annual Members’ Meeting and Community Health Fair.

Her display on the harms of excessive screen and social media use in children and young people featured HPFSS guidance, leaflets and practical resources, proving particularly popular with visitors.

Three different settings, one shared aim: turning evidence into action to protect children’s health.

📩 Keep up with the latest research, evidence, policy developments, resources and HPFSS activity by signing up to our monthly newsletter via link in bio.

05/10/2026

Are we losing children’s attention in a digital world?

The latest OECD PISA findings, drawing on data from around 760,000 students across 91 countries and economies, offer a striking picture of how young people are learning in an increasingly digital world.

📱 28% of students reported being distracted by digital devices in most or every maths lesson.

📖 The OECD also identified a rise in “hasty reading” students skimming rather than engaging deeply with text. 9% of students showed this pattern, nearly double the proportion in 2018.

🤖 And AI is already firmly embedded in young people’s education: 46% of students reported using AI chatbots at least weekly.

These findings do not tell us that digital technology alone is responsible for changes in attainment, attention or reading. The associations are more complex than that, and technology can undoubtedly support learning when used well.
But they do raise important questions.

What happens to sustained attention when distraction is always within reach?

What happens to deep reading when children become accustomed to rapidly scanning information?

What skills do young people need when AI can increasingly do the searching, summarising and drafting for them?

For health professionals, educators and policymakers, this conversation needs to go beyond simply asking how much time children spend on screens.

We need to consider what they are doing there, how digital environments are designed, what they may be displacing, and what this means for children’s learning, health and development.

The digital environment is now part of the environment in which children grow up. Understanding its impact matters.

29/09/2026

Are we raising a “Bedroom Generation”?

New research from the Centre for Social Justice paints a striking picture of how some teenagers are spending their lives outside school.

More than 1 in 3 15-year-olds say they hardly ever leave their bedroom. One in four spends six or more waking hours there on a typical weekend day.

Perhaps one of the most important findings is this:

3 in 4 say they use screens because they have nothing else to do.
This is not simply a story about teenagers choosing their phones over real life.
The CSJ research points to a wider shift in how young people spend their free time.

There are now 100,000 more 11–16-year-olds doing no physical activity than six years ago, while 6 in 10 do no extracurricular physical activity.

Face-to-face socialising is changing too. There has been a 49% increase since 2002 in 15-year-olds spending no evenings with friends each week, while the number spending most evenings with friends has halved since 2010.

HPFSS member Dr Sanjiv Nichani, Consultant Paediatrician at Leicester Children’s Hospital, describes regular movement as his prescription for what he calls the “screendemic”.
His message is wonderfully simple: “Movement is medicine.”

It doesn’t need to be exotic or expensive. Regular, consistent physical activity supports both body and brain.

Actress and campaigner Sophie Winkleman is also backing the Centre for Social Justice’s Fewer Screens, More Sport campaign, which is calling for a Right to Sport for every secondary school pupil, alongside measures to make physical activity more accessible.

For HPFSS, this matters because healthy childhood development needs more than simply reducing screen time. Children need opportunities to move, play, socialise face-to-face, spend time outdoors and feel connected to others.

If young people are telling us they are on screens because there is “nothing else to do”, perhaps we also need to make sure there is something else to do.

Fewer screens. More movement. More connection.

Source: Centre for Social Justice, The Bedroom Generation / Fewer Screens, More Sport, September 2026.

28/09/2026

“Social media companies cannot be trusted to apply external restrictions.”

That is the title of a newly published letter in The BMJ, written by three health professionals from Health Professionals for Safer Screens: Professor Matthew Sadlier, Dr Rebecca Foljambe and Dr Emily Sehmer.

Responding to early research into Australia’s social media age restrictions, they raise a critical question: what happens when legislation depends upon platforms effectively enforcing rules for children?

The figures they highlight are striking.

In 2024, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner found that 80% of 8–12-year-olds had social media accounts despite major platforms including Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram already stipulating a minimum age of 13.

If children could already falsify their ages and circumvent platforms’ existing rules, continued access after legislation should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that protections are futile.

Instead, they argue that companies which have failed to prevent repeated breaches of their own rules cannot simply be relied upon to enforce externally imposed restrictions.

Perhaps the most important part of the letter is why health professionals are making this argument at all.

As they write:
“We are not dealing with an abstract intellectual concern.”
They describe children presenting in clinical practice with the consequences of their digital experiences including cyberbullying and inappropriate content, disrupted sleep after scrolling through the night, and unhealthy behaviours driven by impossible beauty standards.

This is why the debate about children’s social media use cannot be reduced simply to whether a ban “works” or “doesn’t work”.

Legislation, implementation, age assurance, enforcement and accountability all matter.

Ultimately, the success of any intervention must be judged against something much more important than platform compliance alone:

Does it improve real-world health outcomes for children and young people?

We are proud to see HPFSS health professionals bringing their clinical experience and perspective to this important debate in The BMJ. Link in Bio

25/09/2026

Does “No See, No Hear” go far enough? 📵

New Teacher Tapp data offers an interesting insight into what happens when schools take different approaches to mobile phones and the difference is striking.

Among secondary teachers surveyed in September 2026, 43% of those working in schools where phones must simply be “out of sight all day” reported seeing a pupil using a phone when they shouldn’t.

Compare that with just 22% where phones are collected or stored in pouches or lockers, and 21% where phones are banned from the school site.

In other words, teachers in schools relying on an “out of sight” approach reported seeing phone misuse at around twice the rate of those where pupils were physically separated from their devices.

School policies are changing.
In 2018, just 3% of secondary teachers said their school collected phones or used pouches or lockers. That rose to 19% in 2025 and 39% in 2026. Of those currently using this approach, 60% use pouches, 29% collect phones in and 10% use lockers.

There is encouraging news in the wider picture too. Reported phone misuse in secondary schools is now at its lowest level since Teacher Tapp began asking about it in 2022.

The proportion of teachers saying they had seen pupils using phones when they shouldn’t fell from 60% in October 2024, to 53% in September 2025, and to 34% in 2026.

These figures show an association, they do not prove that stricter phone policies caused the overall fall in misuse. But the difference between the policies is difficult to ignore.

For health professionals and parents concerned about the impact of smartphones on children’s sleep, attention, mental health, development and wellbeing, school policy is an important part of the wider conversation.

For schools, the findings raise a practical question: is asking children not to look at or use a phone enough when the device remains within reach?

The latest data suggests that how phones are removed from the school day may matter, not simply whether a school has a policy.

What approach does your child’s school take and what difference have you noticed?

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