Married couple Emma and Matt Willis are concerned for their children’s safety after what they discovered during their Channel 4 documentary Swiped: The School That Banned Smartphones.
Emma and Matt, who got married in 2008, share three children — daughters Isabelle and Trixie and son Ace. In their upcoming doc, which airs tonight (December 11), the pair take part in an experiment to see how the usage of smartphones is impacting and affecting the younger generation.
For the show, Emma and Matt teamed up with The Stanway School in Colchester. Along with the school’s Year 8 students, they have challenged themselves to go without their smartphones for 21 days.
Emma and Matt Willis reveal ‘terrifying’ outcome
During the experiment, the students initially struggled without their phones. However, it resulted in them sleeping better, being more alert in class, and feeling less anxious.
While some of the results were positive, Matt and Emma were disturbed by some of the content the younger generation has access to.
While posing as 13-year-olds on the app TikTok, the pair were shocked to receive suicide-related content and violence against women in a matter of hours by scrolling through a newly made account.
“It’s just not what I thought it was. I know you hear stories about what can be found on there, but finding and searching for something is very different from it being served to you the first time you go on there as a 13-year-old,” Emma expressed.
Describing the content they have access to as “terrifying,” Matt had previously had his concerns: “It’s how much time our kids spend on their smartphones that got us worried. I think we’ve signed up to this experiment because we’re living it.
“We’re going through it with our kids and we have no idea how to navigate this. We’re worried, we’re scared, everything we’re seeing is negative, but we don’t know how to stop it.”
Matt’s oldest daughter’s phone was the ‘biggest disruptor’
Busted’s Matt also explained that when his oldest daughter Isabelle was 11, her smartphone became the “biggest disrupter” between them.
The Year 3000 hitmaker continued: “I feel like I lose her to it quite a bit, I miss her. I remember sitting on the couch once, the TV was playing and we were all on our phone. I was like, ‘This is not good.'”
Admitting that her family has some tech habits of their own, Emma revealed that phones are now charged downstairs instead of in anyone’s bedroom.
Read more: Matt and Emma Willis share fears for their three young kids: ‘How is this allowed to happen?’
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