Everything a journalist needs in under a minute: who is behind antiscreen.co.uk, why it exists, the numbers, the story angles, and how to reach a human quickly.
antiscreen.co.uk, published as The AntiScreen Movement, is a free, evidence-led resource on real play and screen time for families with young children. It carries more than 150 pages: 100 expert-backed questions and answers, a library of 50 fully sourced articles on the researchers behind the evidence, rules to 20 classic games, age guides from birth to five, and a free screen-time checker that runs entirely in the browser and stores nothing. Nothing on the site is sold, gated or collected: no paywall, no email wall, no accounts.
The site is published in partnership with Jaques London, and we are straightforward about that rather than coy: it is made by people whose family business has been making non-screen play for 230 years. There is no app to sell and no monitoring software behind it, which distinguishes it from most digital-wellbeing publishers, whose advice typically ends in a subscription to a screen.
Joe Jaques is the eighth generation of the family behind Jaques of London (pronounced "Jakes"), the world's oldest games company, founded in 1795, 94 years before Nintendo. The firm invented croquet as a manufactured game (1851), designed and made the Staunton chess set (1849), still the worldwide standard for tournament chess, and created table tennis along with parlour classics like Happy Families. Joe built antiscreen.co.uk as a conviction project: the family has spent two centuries on the alternative to screens, and he wanted the evidence for it in one free, guilt-free place.
Key facts, checkable
Jaques of London founded 1795 · Staunton chess set designed and made by Jaques, 1849 · Croquet introduced as a manufactured game, 1851 · Table tennis and Happy Families both Jaques inventions · antiscreen.co.uk launched 2026, 150+ pages, all free
The free screen-time checker: a no-data, no-sign-up tool that shows families their screen time as full days per year, built by the founder of Britain's oldest toy firm. The statutory phone rules: our plain-English tracker of the DfE guidance that became statutory on 29 June 2026 and lands in schools this September. School readiness: our EYFS mapping of what the framework actually requires and the play that builds it. And the heritage angle itself: eight generations, 230 years, and a family firm older than the telephone arguing the case for play you can hold.
Joe is available for comment, interview and broadcast on screen time and childhood, the evidence on play, the phone-ban landscape, and the toy industry. Response is usually same-day on weekdays.
Email: joe@jaques.co.uk, with "Press" in the subject line for fastest routing. High-resolution founder and product photography, plus company history material from the Jaques archive (catalogues and correspondence dating to the nineteenth century), available on request. All statistics on this site trace to primary sources; our sourcing standard is published and we will happily walk you through the evidence behind any claim before you print it.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.