Richard Osman: It's pointless to fret about kids glued to iPhones

Richard Osman has told parents to stop worrying about the hours their children spend playing video games or are glued to smart phones because they are learning valuable skills.

TV presenter Osman said screens had become 'the great bogeyman', arguing that they can increase children's knowledge, happiness and even sociability, as well as lead to well-paid careers.

The best-selling author of the Thursday Murder Club mystery novels said he watched endless TV programmes as a child and drew heavily on his own experience when issuing his impassioned defence of technology.

The 53-year-old, who has two children from his first marriage, said that when he was growing up, his mother – a teacher – saw no problem with him watching so much television because of his fascination with it.

He said the knowledge he gained paved the way for his successful career, including being creative director at Endemol, the production company behind hit TV shows such as Pointless, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, 8 Out of 10 Cats and Deal Or No Deal. He went on to present programmes including Pointless before becoming a highly successful writer.

Shooting for the film based on the first of his books – starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Sir Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie – has just finished, with the movie set to be released next year.

Osman said his childhood interests helped him secure a job on a computer games television show after finishing university. He believes today's youngsters could similarly benefit from their time on devices and computers.

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Speaking on the forthcoming episode of the High Performance podcast, Osman said: 'You get parents now with kids who say, 'Oh my God, they spend all their time playing video games or something'. 

'You think, 'Well, how do you mean? Do you mean slack-jawed? Or do you mean they're excited by what's happening and the next one that's coming out, they know who makes it, and they understand why it's different to the previous game, and they understand who's selling what to who?'.

'If they get all of that stuff, then let them play, because they're going to know something that's going to be incredibly commercially useful in ten years' time.'

Osman added: 'And my mum got that, because she was a primary school teacher.

'She understood that, by and large, if a kid is not interested in something, it's not going to end up being their career.

'So if your kid likes something, whether it's science, languages, musicianship, television, video games, just let them do it.'