Kirstie Allsopp is no stranger to sharing her thoughts and hasn’t held back as she slammed “preposterous” parents who decide to let their kids use smartphones.
The presenter hit the headlines back in 2018 when she explained that during a family holiday in Devon, she smashed her children’s iPads after they spent too much time on them.
Kirstie, 50, who has two sons, Bay Atlas and Oscar Hercules with her partner Ben Anderson has not held back in her latest newspaper column about the use of smartphones.
The presenter claimed she was recently left speechless after discovering that one-third of children are given their first phone by the age of six.
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Recent figures released by Ofcom have now revealed that by 11, 90 per cent of children own a mobile and almost every child owns their own phone by 15.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Kirstie said: “It hit a nerve, the report is truly disturbing before adding that her kids were not allowed a phone until they turned 13.
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The Location, Location, Location presenter went on to add: “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, in a nutshell, we’re handing our children over to Big Tech.”
Kirstie admits that while children are exposed to “harmful” content such as porn, they’re also exposed to certain social pressures that kids would not have faced perhaps two decades ago.
(Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images)
She claims that when her eldest Bay was 11, there were only three kids in his class that didn’t have a phone and he was one of them before saying he received his first phone when he was 13.
Her youngest son, Oscar, also received his first mobile aged 13 in order to keep the contact information of his primary school pals.
(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
Despite this, her two off-springs face strict rules that include leaving their devices in the kitchen overnight, not being allowed to take them into their bedrooms and having “phone-free days”.
As well as this, Kirstie has the passwords to her kid’s phones, meaning she can “pick them up at any point and look at what they’ve been doing”.
But her children won’t be spending too much time scrolling on social media but definitely will not have the fear of missing out when it comes to seeing what their pals are up to.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
