Government funding package to tackle screentime addiction in children

15 September 2025

The government is set to allocate £22.5 million in funding to boost extra-curricular clubs to tackle a ‘worrying trend’ that has seen children ‘spending more and more of their time detached from the real world, either stuck in their bedrooms or behind a screen’.

The scheme is part of a wider £88 million funding package to help schools, youth clubs, and organisations like Scouts and Guides expand youth services and activities for young people. The package includes £30.5 million for the Better Youth Spaces programme to boost youth clubs in areas of high child poverty, funding facilities such as climbing walls and gym equipment.

The funding will be made available to 400 schools over a three-year period, giving pupils access to after-school activities such as sport, art, music, debating or volunteering.

A YouGov poll carried out for the Children’s Commissioner in March 2025 found a quarter of children aged 8 to 15 in England spend two to three hours a day on a device with internet access, such as a smartphone or console. Another 20 per cent spend three to four hours a day their devices and 23 per cent do so for more than four hours.

An Education Committee report from 2024  found children’s screen time increased by 52 per cent between 2020 and 2022. It also stated that a quarter of children and young people were using smartphones ‘in a way that is consistent with a behavioural addiction’. 

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