A Leamington father who limited his kids screen time after becoming concerned about their "perception of life" has shared his tips for other parents to limit usage. 

Andy Miles, 48, became concerned after hearing his eight-year-old son talk about his friends' "six-packs" and his daughter, 13, talk about the private jets she saw on Instagram.

The co-founder of a social networking app - Hollrs - is conscious of how his children - aged 22, 19, 13 and eight - use their phone.

To help them use them productively and in a healthy way Andy and his wife, Verity, 46, have installed Apple's family control systems on their two younger children's devices.

They have to ask for permission to purchase apps and time limits are set on their apps which mean once the time is up, access is blocked. 

If they want extra time, the children must ask for it and the parents can approve or deny it. 

Andy, of Royal Leamington Spa, said: "We started to notice there would be five or six hours on an individual app in an evening - that's a quarter of a day.

"We haven't had massive issues with our three girls and I think it seems to be harder on younger girls in terms of image. 

"But my son is eight and has already started to talk about his friend having a six-pack. 

"I started to see the fact that boys are more body-conscious and not necessarily in a healthy way. 

"There is a lot of extreme over-training using excessive weights. 

"I was an athlete but it wasn't the be all and end all to be aesthetically pleasing and fit. 

"I think in general images are warping our view on what's realistic for our life and what we're going to get. 

"Some of that behaviour comes from a bad place where maybe you're not one of the boys that gets a lot of attention from the opposite sex. 

"That can be for whatever reason - maybe you're not very tall or confident - and the feeling of being ignored can lead to the kind of psyches you're starting to see Andrew Tate take advantage of. 

"People feel disenfranchised. In general everything seems to be so much harder. Life was a lot simpler in the 1990s."

Andy does not restrict his older children's usage as they have to "find their own way and monitor their own behaviours".

But he says he has a "parental responsibility to keep an eye on things" with his younger children. 

He said: "They're maybe making poor decisions because they don't know any better." 

The couple set "downtime"- essentially blocking the phone between two time periods and is happy about his children's school's policy of banning mobile phones. 

They put their phones in a bag with a magnetic lock at the beginning of the day and cannot get them unlocked until the end. 

In September, the school is banning smart watches and then moving to an entirely PC-based learning approach, Andy says. 

He said: "There are a lot of distractions for my daughter that come with a mobile phone - as a parent, that's my responsibility. 

"I have parents who say they cannot get their child off the phone and I have told them about this family system and they didn't even know it existed - it's not widely known. 

"It takes the discussion about whether you should be on your device and there's not a constant war about whether you have had enough time. 

"It's not me being a dad, being mean, saying: 'No more phone for you. You had an amount of time we agreed."

He worries about the influence social media has on his children. 

He said: "Online bullying is a thing my children's school has been quite hot on. I think we have been lucky in as much as we haven't seen too much of that. 

"But the biggest problems have been over their perception of what life is like - what they believe they are entitled to. 

"They see a lot of things online - people in private jets, expensive cars - and wonder why they don't have them. 

"Life seems very easy behind Instagram.

"Another major concern is the expenditure of time on a non-productive effort. 

"I can be guilty of looking at the news or YouTube and it's the same process of managing to drag myself away from it. 

"Covid did change things: my older children missed out on that period when you're 16 to 20, you go out and don't really have any responsibilities. 

"There was a lot of time spent sitting at home. An extra hour doing some reading or revision would make a massive difference - instead of frittering it away in a way that's non-productive."

His youngest son is allowed to watch YouTube Kids and Fortnite videos and plays computer games with the chat options disabled.  

Andy added: "He has no social media nor will he. 

"We're probably of the view that our girls were given a phone too early but can you take it away? Were as if he to get a phone, it might be an old Nokia so he can keep in touch."

Hollrs was founded last year by Andy.

He said: "It's a small social network that allows customers or people with an opinion to be able to talk to brands or political bodies by leaving videos. 

"We take those views and put people into discussion groups. 

"I realise there's a contradiction but we have tried to set up something where people get to have conversations about something that's bothering them that they care deeply about."

Andy's top tips -

- Apply family controls on Apple devices - "They take the conflict out of the time conversation. 

"There are still going to be discussions but you don't have to physically take devices away and don't have to do anything clever with your network."

- Put filters on children's devices to prevent them accessing inappropriate websites and search results. 

- Change phone screens to grey, taking the colour - and excitement - out of using the phone.