Matt and Emma Willis chat to London Mums about their interesting experimental project, Swiped – The School that Banned Smartphones, a landmark new documentary series which tackles the timely issue of the impact of smartphones on children’s behaviour with a pioneering social experiment. The urgency of this issue cannot be overstated. 50% of all 9-year-olds in the UK own a smartphone with 43% of UK teens using their smartphones during school lessons. Frequent social media use has been found to increase a child’s risk of depression by 27% and a recent Education Select Committee report revealed that one in four children now use their phones in a manner resembling behavioural addiction. Hosts Matt and Emma Willis have joined forces with The Stanway School in Colchester to challenge a group of Year 8 pupils – and themselves – to give up their smartphones completely for 21 days. I watched it and I felt both shocked and emotional. Watch it as a matter of urgency. It starts tonight on Channel 4.
What was your motivation for presenting the series and also for taking part in the wider experiment?
Emma: Well, it was for our kids, because we are the people this doc is speaking to. We are the parents of the demographic who are consumed by devices all the time. It’s something we were very aware of before we were asked to present the doc. We felt like we were always saying to our kids “come off your phone, come off your device, come downstairs now, it’s time to hang out as a family”, so when we were asked to host this series, we jumped at the chance because we thought this would be a great way to educate ourselves. Matt and I also wanted to look at our own smartphone use, because we’re not only aware of how our kids use them, but also of our own relationship with devices and how it impacts not just our daytime, but also the time when we should be switching off—not just from a technology standpoint, but to give our brains a break from work, life admin, and everything else.
We were very aware that we were addicted. If we as grownups are addicted, and we haven’t even had technology our whole lives (and to be honest I’m a total technophobe!), how are kids meant to stand a chance?
Matt: I’ve been curious about the impact of social media on everybody for a long time now. I did a social media detox a few years back and meant to do seven days but ended up doing something like 4-6 months in the end. But eventually it crept back up and I was noticing that I was constantly scrolling. I’ve heard the word “addiction” used about phones a lot and wanted to understand that a bit more, because I think that word can get thrown about a bit. But I feel like I’ve seen it happen with my kids, and I can see the walls come up when I try to talk to them about it.
You say that you felt like it was “pushed” upon you to give your kids smartphones when they were of secondary school age – what was that pressure like?
Matt: When our eldest kids went into Year 7, we were pretty much told that they’d need a smartphone for school because they’d use it to communicate with teachers, they’d receive homework – things like that. And that helped me rationalise it a bit because I thought “yeah that makes sense, it’s just preparing them for how they’ll need to operate in their adult life”. But then I saw this massive shift in the way my kids interacted with technology – it was almost seamless. A whole world had opened up to them, in the palm of their hand, and it was quite shocking.
At the beginning of the programme, you both express feelings of having “lost” your eldest kids [NOTE: Matt and Emma have a daughter who is 15 and a son who is 13, as well as an 8-year-old] to their phones – how do those behaviours show themselves in your household?
Emma: Mostly just looking at what everyone else is doing with their life and not actually concentrating on the life that you have. But our eldest kids are at an age now where they don’t want to hang out with us all the time, in fact, hardly ever, because they want to be with their mates. So, they go up to their bedroom and they hang out with their mates online which is a whole world away from how I used to hang out with my mates. To hang out with your mates, you were either glued to a wall on a landline with a curly cord, trying to hide in some other doorway so that no one could hear you. Or you were out with them physically, in person. But now their communication and their socialising is through a device.
Before I made this doc, in my overprotective parent brain, I would think “I’m glad they’re in the house because I know where they are”. My mum never knew – I told her where I was, but I could have been anywhere. If I’d missed the bus and I didn’t have any money to call her from a public phone, they didn’t know if I’d missed the bus or whether I was in trouble. I’m glad I don’t have all of that because I think I would literally combust. It feels like they’re safer in your house but they’re not because they’ve got every stranger in the world in the palm of their hand.
How would you like to get your kids back – what would togetherness look like to you?
Emma: I do totally understand that they’re at the age where they don’t want to hang out with us, and that’s totally normal for teenagers – they want to discover themselves and hang out with their friends. But I would like to manage all of our screentime a bit more. If we’re going out for a big walk as a family together on a weekend, we should be able to leave our phones at home. I hear a lot of “oh, I just need to respond to that message” or “I can’t leave them on read” and I’m like – yes, you can! We live in this world of efficiency where everything demands an answer right now. I’m guilty of it too – I’ll sometimes reply to work emails at 8 or 9 at night just so I don’t forget. It’s so easy to stay “on” right up until you go to sleep.
There’s a point in the series where you are both having a discussion about putting parental controls on your kids’ devices – and you can’t quite work out which of you were supposed to have done it, or who had to take responsibility for it. What advice would you give to parents negotiating that issue and having similar discussions?
Emma: Oh God, yes – I hope that lots of other parents feel the same about this otherwise I’m going to have major parent guilt. I’m not very good at tech, Matt is considerably better than me, so I’m always like “that’s your domain, you need to oversee it” but then I suppose it’s also my job to make sure he’s done it. And I didn’t do that. It’s a really complicated and tricky process, so I’ve always just said that Matt can do it – but really, I need to educate myself and make myself responsible. We can’t rely on the Government, or big tech and obviously our kids aren’t going to willingly do it!
Matt: It’s something that parents need to tackle immediately and head-on. You can’t go without it and then try and put restrictions on later. What I don’t understand is why you can’t buy a kids smartphone? Why can’t you buy one that’s already childproof, and comes age-restricted? It feels a bit unfair in a way to put the onus completely on parents, because I use technology every single day and it still wasn’t clear to me how to put these controls on my kid’s devices. It was quite bewildering.
In the series you meet families whose children have either died or taken their own lives as a result of content they’ve seen on social media. What impact did that have on you?
Emma: Massive. We met two families who had lost children, both 13-year-old boys and I have a 13-year-old son, so I put myself in their shoes. I could feel their pain and agony – how do you even begin to move forward after something like that? I was super emotional the whole time we were filming. After we had those meetings, I literally came home at night and was just trying to communicate with my kids what we’d seen, what we’d learned, the dangers of the things that you can see when you’re not even searching for it, it’s just served to you by an algorithm. Meeting those parents was the most impactful thing that happened during the three weeks of the experiment, that’s the thing that will stay with me forever.
You both took part in the experiment for the whole 21 days. What did you miss the most about not having your phone?
Emma: The first four days I was an absolute mess. Beforehand I was so excited for it and Matt was sh*tting himself. I was like, bring it on! And it ended up being the other way around. Matt felt liberated and I was a mess. I felt so out of control because we live through our phones, don’t we? Banking, schooling, your front door, setting your alarm, waking up in the morning! I felt totally out of control. We had a brick phone because we obviously needed some form of communication with work, kids, school but all we could do was text. But once I’d adjusted and gone back to old fashion ways of living, I absolutely loved it! When we got our phones back, I didn’t use mine for two days and barely touched it for the first week.
Matt: To be honest I missed everything about it which was what surprised me the most. It’s very hard to be an adult without a smartphone. The whole word is designed around these things now. I had to start bringing my wallet out with me – I haven’t done that in ages! So it all took a lot of planning. I also didn’t have anything to ease the feeling of boredom. When Emma and I were filming, we were spending about 90 minutes together in a car to get to and from the school – and I had to just look out the window. Or, God forbid, we had to speak to one another!
How did you feel when you got it back?
Matt: I felt really strange about it, my phone didn’t feel comfortable in my hand again for a little while. I’m on tour at the minute, and have lots of downtime and I’m jet lagged, so it’s been very tempting to just go back to mindlessly scrolling, but I’m trying to be more intentional about what I consume.
Matt – you compare the way you felt about your phone, with how you felt when you were living with drug addiction. How similar are those feelings and did it drive home to you how dangerous smartphone usage can be?
Matt: It sounds so dramatic to say it, but I had these weird feelings of withdrawal, from my smartphone. I missed it and felt a craving for it. Which feels completely pathetic, I can’t believe I feel this way about a device. I knew it was going to be hard, don’t get me wrong – I absolutely did not underestimate the power of this thing in my hand. But I found it more challenging than I expected. It was apparent to me that I was definitely addicted to my smartphone, but it was also really shocking to see the kids who took part also go through what I can only describe as withdrawal systems.
What habits have you changed after the experiment?
Emma: We’ve changed a lot of things. Our kids no longer have their devices in their rooms at night—that was the biggest takeaway that all the experts we met emphasized. The number one rule is no devices in kids’ rooms at night because that’s when it’s very easy for them to become a bit more irrational and they may say or do things they probably wouldn’t earlier in the day.
I’ve also taken social media off my phone – I just have it on a device that stays at home, and I only check it in the morning and the evening. So I don’t have this void of scrolling time any time I’m in a car, or waiting for a train, or have a 30 minute break at work. I’m actually using my brain! My house is the cleanest and most decluttered it’s ever been. I’ll finish paperwork or take the rubbish to the tip – all those horrible jobs that you can avoid when you’re procrastinating and scrolling. I’m so much more present in my own life now. And I’m way more positive, honestly, it’s so refreshing and brilliant.
Matt: I’m definitely trying to be more mindful of what I consume on my phone. I went through my Instagram and realised I was following something like 3,500 people. It’s really laborious to unfollow that many, but whenever I have a spare half hour, I go through my feeds and clean them up so I’m only consuming content that feels good and useful to me. Because who needs to follow 3500 people, it’s crazy! And when I’m travelling, I’ll make sure to download videos from YouTube in advance, so then I don’t go down that vortex of the YouTube algorithm. I do like keeping up with what’s going on in the world, but sometimes it’s OK to take a step back.
Who needs to take responsibility for this issue? Does the government need to legislate? Do big tech companies need to be held to higher account? Do individual parents need to educate themselves more?
Emma: It’s everyone. It’s very hard to pin responsibility on one group of people because it’s never that clear cut. It’s a multi-pronged approach because big tech won’t make changes unless they’re pressured, and the government likely won’t act without a push from parents and schools. If families and educators can come together to make noise, tech companies and the government might have to listen and create change.
Parents also need to stay informed. Kids often peer-pressure us by saying, “My friend has this new phone” or “Everyone in my class has this app,” but talking to other parents you find out that’s not always true. Many of us feel the same way, so we need to get together to make change.
What do you hope viewers take away from this series?
Emma: I hope they realise that it’s never too late. I came into this totally naïve and the things I learned felt like a massive smack in the face. I felt like a really bad parent. But actually, I just needed to educate myself on the world that my kids are growing up in because that’s the best way I can help them, even if they don’t want it. And I hope that the parents watching feel represented, and that they’ll sit down and watch the series with their kids – because that might also help kids to understand where their parents are coming from. I hope that this can be a small part of a much bigger, and entirely necessary, conversation and movement.
Matt: This isn’t something we can sleep on any longer, it’s a massive problem that’s going to shape the way our children develop. For me, it’s not even just about my teenagers – it’s about my eight-year-old, when the time comes too. It’s going to affect younger kids in the long run. And it’s going to take everyone – parents, schools, government, tech companies – to come together, because it’s all of our job to protect our kids from things that might negatively impact them. We don’t let our kids drive, we don’t let our kids drink alcohol – so we need to be wary about putting something in their hand that is affecting their development, affecting their social skills and affecting the way they interact with society.
