Presenter Dan Walker’s children must sign a contract before they are allowed to have their own mobile phones, he has revealed.
The former BBC Breakfast host said his three children, 15-year-old Susanna, 13-year-old Jessica, and 11-year-old Joe, are not allowed to keep their phones in their bedroom at night and have limited use of social media apps.
Walker, 45, and his wife Sarah sit down with each child when they got their phones to underline “the things we expect from [them] in terms of what [they] do with it and how [they] use it”.
He described his and Sarah’s parenting style as “strict” when it comes to phones.
Speaking to The Times, Walker said that the contract allows both parents to check the websites and social media sites their children engage with on a regular basis.
“I routinely have a look at the children’s phones. Personally, my wife and I try to be really open with our kids,” he said.
The children were given their own phones when they got old enough to walk home from school on their own, with the eldest Susanna only receiving her phone at the age of 12.
They are also not allowed certain apps that have an age restriction, such as Instagram, Walker said.
“They were behind a lot of their friends in terms of getting the apps like Instagram, but that is what we decided to do,” he added.
If the children break the contract, their phone gets taken away “for a period” of time.
The Walkers’ rules are borne from “serious concerns” about how social media impacts young people.
Recently, an inquest into the death of 14-year-old schoolgirl Molly Russell found that the “negative effects of online content” had contributed to her death.
The inquest heard how she accessed material that was ultimately detrimental to her mental health and led her to end her own life in November 2017.
Walker said that the current generation of children have no respite from bullying thanks to the constant online nature of social media.
“Issues like bullying don’t stop at the school gates,” he said. “It can be a non-stop, 24 hours a day drip-drip build-up of pressure. There can be no release and no let-up.”
He raised the issue of suicide among young people in his new book, Standing on the Shoulders: Incredible Heroes and How They Inspire Us, and spoke to three fathers who lost their daughters to suicide.
Mike Palmer, Andy Airey and Tim Owen, known as 3 Dads Walking, are walking across the UK to raise funds for a suicide prevention charity following the deaths of their daughters.
Walker said the group makes a “powerful case” for lessons on suicide prevention in schools, adding: “We need to be more open in what we discuss with our kids.”
