A volley of pinging WhatsApp texts interrupts my lunchtime dog walk. “Draconian, punitive measures!” says one. “Well, it’s true smartphones are detrimental to mental health,” says another. The unofficial “Parents of Year 8” group chat for my daughters’ school is going bonkers, prompted by the school proposing a new stricter phone policy – dumbphones only until Year 10.

Since Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation was published in March it has gone … well, viral. Haidt’s clarion call for parents to encourage an explorative play-based, rather than phone-based, childhood to avoid producing lonely, anxious generations, like Gen Z, strikes a chord.

The Telegraph London