Experts call for official guidelines on child screen use

Educationalists, psychologists and authors also call for a minister for children to try to address 'toxic' nature of childhood

A group of leading authors, educationalists and child-development experts is calling on the government to introduce national guidelines on the use of screens, amid concern about the impact on children's physical and mental health.

It is one of a series of measures outlined in a letter to the Guardian, highlighting what it describes as the increasingly "toxic" nature of childhood, and signed by 40 senior figures, including the author Philip Pullman, the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the psychotherapist Susie Orbach and the childcare expert Penelope Leach.