Movie star and father of five Hugh Grant says he’s fed up with seeing his children glued to screens — and insists he’s speaking not as a celebrity activist but as “just another angry parent.”
Grant has campaigned on digital privacy issues since accusing journalists at the now-defunct News of the World of hacking his phone in 2011, later securing settlements with publishers, including Mirror Group Newspapers and News Group Newspapers (the Sun), most recently in 2024.
‘And you think, “What is this? What happened with you and Google Classroom or whatever it might be?”‘
But a recently resurfaced clip shows the “Bridget Jones” star venting about something far more familiar to parents: schools pushing screens, Chromebooks, and app-based learning on children who already spend much of their lives online.
Screen idol
In the clip — recorded last June during a panel discussion on rolling back “phone-based childhood and screen-based school days” — Grant complained of an “eternal, exhausting, and depressing battle” with children who only want to be on screens.
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“And the final straw was when the schools started saying, with some smugness, ‘We give every child a Chromebook, and they do a lot of lessons on their Chromebook, and they do all their homework on their Chromebook,’” Grant said. “And you just thought, that is the last f**king thing they need — and the last thing we need.”
Pwning parents
Grant also criticized the defensive posture schools and politicians adopt when parents raise concerns about classroom technology.
“Suddenly you get letters in a kind of semi-legalese,” he said. “And you think, ‘What is this? What happened with you and Google Classroom or whatever it might be?’”
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Photo by SGranitz/WireImage via Getty Images (Cannes, France, 1998)
The actor said his skepticism has been shaped by years of experience confronting powerful institutions. Grant is a board member of Hacked Off, the media-reform group founded after the phone-hacking scandal to campaign against illegal surveillance and press abuses.
Game over
While Hacked Off does not focus on school technology, Grant suggested the same instinct to close ranks now appears when parents question the role of screens in education.
“I don’t think politicians ever do anything because it’s the right thing to do,” Grant said. “Even if it’s the right thing to do to protect children. They’ll only do what gets them votes.”
According to Grant, meaningful change will come only when enough parents push back — not just against smartphones but against what he sees as the normalization of screens throughout childhood.
“I think that once you get a critical mass of parents who are outraged by ed-tech as well as all the other issues — the phones, etcetera — that is when politicians listen,” he said.
“And it’s when schools start to listen because they’re scared of people leaving their schools and losing business.”
Grant is the father of five children between the ages of 7 and 14.
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