Sandy Chappell

Good morning. How’s your week going? Sitting reading papers from 5am before off to London again. Two very late nights (so far) & three early starts this week. A lot of good people work incredibly long hours in the Lords, either trying to stop bills that will cost Uk tax payers a fortune (Chagos) or adding amendments to make bills safer or better. It’s a shame most don’t see all the hard works or long hours that’s put in.

Tell your MP to back our amendment to raise the age limit to 16. Government consultation could mean anything (or nothing), with no timeline or guarantee. It’s a choice between certainty or delay.

Addiction to short-form videos reduces brain activity in the frontal lobe weakening the ability to focus.

In 1975, developmental psychologist Dr. Edward Tronick sat a mother and her baby face to face and filmed what happened when the mother suddenly stopped responding. First the mother plays normally, smiling, talking, making eye contact. The baby mirrors everything, laughing, pointing, babbling back. Then the mother goes blank. No expression, no response, nothing. Within seconds the baby notices. She smiles harder. Points. Waves. Screeches. Uses every tool she has to get her mother back. When nothing works, she turns away, loses control of her posture, and collapses into herself with what Tronick described as “a withdrawn, hopeless facial expression.” The moment the mother re-engages, the baby recovers almost instantly. Three minutes of emotional absence from a parent did that to an infant. It became one of the most replicated findings in developmental psychology. This was 1975, before smartphones existed. Now look around any park, restaurant, or living room. How many babies are looking up at a parent who is scrolling instead of looking back?

Shocking new MRI study on 3–5 year olds: Just 2 hours of interactive screen time per day is linked to measurable loss of white matter in the brain. Professor Mike Nagel (University of the Sunshine Coast): “White matter is myelin — it insulates axons like plastic on a wire. Deficits in myelin early in life mean deficits in neural connectivity.” The more screen time, the greater the white matter loss — especially in areas tied to language development and literacy. Nagel’s first reaction (as a researcher and father): “Wow… I was not anticipating seeing anything like that. It hadn’t occurred to me that something as little as two hours a day was having such a profound effect.” Parents: Has this changed how you think about screen time limits for young kids — or do you think the risks are overstated?