Giovanna Fletcher is urging parents not to treat all screen time as the enemy as families head into exam season, saying phones and laptops can give children tools they would not otherwise have. The author and podcaster is speaking as part of a Family Chat campaign running throughout 2026, with the latest conversation focusing on how children are managing extra online revision and the stress that comes with it.
That message lands now because summer brings a strange mix for many households: day trips, holidays and, for older children, GCSE pressure. Fletcher, who is mum to three boys aged seven to 11, said technology has become part of everyday learning at home and that support matters when revision starts competing with everything else for attention. “I think, as parents, we’re maybe quick to think screen time is all bad, but actually there’s so much it gives our kids that we didn’t have,” she said. “My youngest is in Year Three and there’s a lot of homework done on a device, so they’re learning to do it at such a young age. It becomes second nature to them.”
The campaign is built around open conversations about staying safe online, and Fletcher has been talking directly with parents and children about the issues they face. For Lilia, 16, who is sitting her GCSEs, that means work on a phone has to be carefully managed. She said she only messages friends after school if she needs to ask something important, and keeps group chats on silent while revising so she is not pulled off task. “If I’m doing revision on my phone and I get a message on a group chat, I could get distracted, so normally I have all my group chats on silent,” she said.
That is where the pushback comes in. Fletcher says screen time is not automatically bad, but Ellie says it can become a concern if it cuts into the children’s sleep at both ends of the day. The family’s routines show both sides of the argument. Lilia uses online quizzes, takes notes and turns them into flash cards, while Ellie says AI can help the family work through a maths question or estimate how a past paper might have gone. “It’s useful and can be quite a morale booster,” she said.
The family now plans to use Tesco Mobile’s Top Tips for Supporting Children Around Exam Season, which encourage a revision-only setup with a laptop rather than a phone and flag signs of fatigue or stress. The question is not whether screens belong in exam prep — they already do — but whether families can keep the benefits while drawing a line before revision turns into distraction and late-night scrolling.
