I have a pickpocket living in my house. The thief is small, agile and remarkably discriminating in her larceny. Not for this pocket dipper the usual array of purses or loose change (though I doubt she’d baulk at the latter). It is my phone, and solely my phone, she’s after. And, like every burglar caught halfway through an open window, this charming crook insists she’s only ‘borrowing’ it. Yes, my ten-year-old daughter is addicted to YouTube and will use whatever means possible to feed the habit.  

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This, despite my dutifully signing up to every newsletter warning of the great screen invasion of childhood. When Sophie Winkleman and Hugh Grant decry the perils these devices pose to our children, I nod with an enthusiasm bordering on the wild. I bore anyone who will listen that, when the time finally comes for my daughter to have her own phone, it will be a Balance or Pinwheel model – one of those once-standard, now radical devices that can make calls, send texts and little else. For the time being, I stash my phone in places she can’t reach (reader, she clambers); I change my password (through some sorcery, she cracks it); I remove the YouTube app and set stringent time limits (she reinstates it and overrides them).  

But even........

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