We parents have no moral high ground on screen time | Blaise Tapp

Although nothing new – mankind has been obsessed with flickering images since the days of John Logie Baird – marshaling screentime in 2020 is especially fraught with dangers.

The main issue is that there are screens everywhere, all with instant access to the bottomless archive that is the internet.

As a result it is near impossible to ensure that your little darlings are neither watching too much or the wrong things.

I am deeply suspicious of any parent who proclaims that their Nathaniel or Deirdre doesn't watch anything because they are too busy learning Mandarin or mastering the art of dry stone walling.

These people – they do exist – are either horribly deluded or live in a different postcode to their offspring.

The main problem with both mapping out and enforcing any sort of ground rules for what kids can watch and when is that the vast majority of parents occupy absolutely no moral high ground whatsoever.

In many cases we ‘grown-ups’ gawp at screens more than those we are supposed to be teaching life lessons to and this habit has become something of an addiction for millions since lockdown began back in March.

A comprehensive Ofcom study found that during the bleakness of April the average adult watched a screen of any description for a mind-boggling six hours and 25 minutes – the best part of half a waking day for many.

Not all of this was spent in front of the television – the kids had to have access at some point – as the research showed that videos were viewed on other devices, presumably on smartphones.

Rather like an alcoholic who claims that having a pint of stout isn’t ‘drinking’, I often get around accusations that I am going square-eyed by protesting loudly that watching a ‘quick clip’ on my Korean handset doesn’t count.

As a parent, the phone is the bane of my life, having given in to pester power last year and allowed our then 10-year-old to take possession of her own device.

The past 12 months have been a journey into the unknown and, if I am being brutally honest I am still none the wiser about what it is my eldest is consuming most of the time.

It seems innocuous enough – videos of cute babies and dancing Americans with improbably white teeth – but these aren’t people that I know, therefore I struggle to make a judgment as to whether or not they are good for our pre-teen’s impressionable mind.

When I was growing up it was a much simpler process – Blue Peter and Andy Crane and his broom cupboard was fine to watch, whereas the likes of Dirty Den and the Singing Detective were absolutely off-limits.

That is not to say that I don’t attempt to intervene on a regular basis and my insistence on removing all gadgets from her bedroom by 8.30pm (9pm during holidays) is routinely met with catcalls of wild protest.

Then there is the five-year-old, who is obsessed with that most inane video genre – the one in which people, usually irritating-sounding folk on the other side of the Atlantic, open packets of toys and action figures.

Quite what the appeal of watching somebody else open up a packet containing a two-inch plastic model of Scooby Doo I will never know, but it works for our boy.

While he doesn’t have his own phone, he does tend to want to look at his parents’ devices when he wakes up.

The sensible response to this request would be a firm ‘no’, but that is easier said than done at 6.30am.

The advice about screen time rules is varied and contradictory, to say the least, meaning that hapless parents like me very much have to make it up as we go along.