Hugh Grant: Screen-obsessed schools are ruining our children
Hugh Grant is campaigning to remove laptops and tablets from schools.
The actor, a father of five, says he is 'another angry parent fighting the eternal, exhausting and depressive battle with children who only want to be on a screen'.
Grant has joined forces with Dr Jonathan Haidt, the American social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, to banish smartphones and educational technology (EdTech) from the classroom.
According to a 2023 report by the Department for Education, 98 per cent of teachers use technology across a range of classroom activities with laptops and tablets now available to more than 9 in 10 pupils in the UK's primary and secondary schools.
Grant appeared alongside Dr Haidt and Sophie Winkleman, the Peep Show actress, at an event organised by the campaign group Close Screens, Open Minds at Knightsbridge School in London.
He said: 'The final straw was when the school started saying, with some smugness, we give every child a Chromebook, and they do a lot of lessons on their Chromebook, and they do all their homework on their Chromebook, and you just thought that is the last f---ing thing they need, and the last thing we need.'
Dr Haidt, who is campaigning for phone-free schools, smartphones to be banned for under-14s, and under-16s to be prohibited from using social media, said technology should have a role in school, but 'not on children's desks'.
His 2024 book argues that the introduction of smartphones has caused an 'epidemic of mental illness' in children, 'rewiring' the brains of the Zoomer and Alpha generations, resulting in 'attention fragmentation'.
The Government has rejected calls for a law banning phones in classrooms, and Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has dismissed the demands as a 'headline-grabbing gimmick'.
'Test scores began going down after 2012,' Dr Haidt told the event. 'I don't know if it's because of the phones, or because that's when we put iPads and Chromebooks on kids' desks. Whatever it is, as soon as we brought in the EdTech, scores plunged.'
Referring to maths and spelling apps which reward pupils with colourful tokens, icons and emojis, he added: 'If you gamify a quarter of a child's school day with these quick rewards, the child's dopamine neurons will habituate to that constant stimulation and will become less responsive, needing more stimulation in order to make the child feel normal.
'What that means is that the child will now find anything that's not gamified painfully boring. That's what we've done to our kids, by giving them devices in school.'
Grant, 64, who has Tabitha, 13, and Felix, 11, with his former partner Tinglan Hong, and John, 12, Lulu, eight, and six-year-old Blue with his wife Anna Eberstein, said parents feared 'rocking the boat' by challenging the digitisation of learning.
'Do you lobby the schools and if you do, what's the weird, sudden, frozen, sepulchral silence from them on this issue?' he said.
'Do you go to government? My experience, campaigning with Hacked Off (the press ethics campaign) over 12 years is that's probably a bad idea. I'm very cynical about it now.
'I don't think politicians ever do anything because it's the right thing to do, even if it's the right thing to do to protect children. They'll only do what gets them votes. They only care about their career.
'Therefore, I think the third option on this, which is to go after parents, is the right one. Because I think that once you get a critical mass of parents who are outraged by EdTech, as well as all the other issues, the phones, etc, that is when politicians listen because they're scared of that.
'That's also when schools start to listen because they're scared of people leaving their schools and losing business.'
Grant also hit out at the 'kind of ridiculous posh private schools' he sends his children to for restricting outdoor play.
'They're the ones saying they're not going to play outside today because it's raining, or they can't go on the climbing frame because it's windy. It's pathetic. It seems to me that there is space here for a hero school, a set of schools, to break the mould.'
Winkleman, who is married to Freddie Windsor, the King's second cousin, and has two daughters, said: 'We were sold a dream that technology would revolutionise education, personalise learning and prepare kids for a digital future. Billions of dollars and pounds later, where are we?
'Test scores are plummeting globally. The increased screen use is damaging children's health. Pupils are resorting to ChatGPT to write their essays, and teachers are employing AI to mark them, which begs the question, what's the point of school?'
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