Screens at schools fuelling child health 'crisis', doctors warn

Ministers are being urged to confront a “crisis” in children’s physical and developmental health that clinicians have linked to screen-based learning.

More than 150 of them have put their names to an open letter on the issue.

The letter is addressed to Education Secretary Lucy Powell and Health Secretary Yvette Cooper.

Its signatories include GPs, ophthalmologists, audiologists, paediatricians and speech and language therapists.

They describe the absence of any child-focused health scrutiny of “EdTech” as “a serious safeguarding concern” for both departments.

The clinicians go on to warn: “No drug, food product or toy is given to millions of children without a single safety check. Yet, astonishingly, EdTech devices and platforms currently used by millions of pupils in schools and for homework every day of the week face no equivalent child-focused health scrutiny.”

Around £900 million a year is spent on “EdTech” in English schools, according to the letter.

However, no product has to show it is safe for children’s physical health before a school buys it, the letter says.

Analysis cited by the clinicians suggests almost one million children spend nearly every lesson on screens.

Many of those children now spend longer on screens in the classroom than they are recommended to spend in a day, the analysis found.

The clinicians also point to a rise in short-sightedness among UK children, saying the proportion has more than doubled since the 1960s.

Their letter warns that a three-year-old spending three hours a day on screens misses an estimated 194 conversational turns and 1,139 adult words daily.

More than two million UK children are now struggling with speech and language, according to the clinicians.

Around a third of children start school not ready to learn, they say.

Particular concern is raised in the letter for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send).

The clinicians say that these children are often “disproportionately steered towards” screen-based learning at the point they most need close adult supervision.

Becky Foljambe, from Health Professionals for Safer Screens, said: “Health professionals can’t keep prescribing glasses and speech therapy for a problem that schools are making worse.

“We worry about school meals and sport, as part of ensuring children are in the best possible health in their learning environment and yet we are throwing caution to the wind with these screens, which we now know are adversely impacting on children’s development and their learning.

“We now also have the grim knowledge that our most vulnerable children are being pushed onto screens posing as education the fastest, to ease pressures that have very little to do with their health and educational needs.”

Jane Rowland, from the campaign group SafeScreens, said: “No other product is put in front of millions of children without a single safety check, yet screens now dominate the school day and follow children home in the evening.

“We are gambling with the health and safety of millions of children, every single day.

“Before another penny of public money goes into this experiment, ministers must commission a fully independent review of 1:1 devices and EdTech in schools.”