Benedict Cumberbatch is worried about the impact of social media on children

He told The Independent: "Media is co-opting children so early. And it is because of the devices we have in our hands.

"We have to control the access that they provide to all of us. We can't just go, 'Well, let's give a smartphone to our kids and see what happens.' Look what's happened to an entire generation."

Benedict finds it moving to see how kind and loving his own sons are.

He said: "Children have an extraordinary ability to be empaths without any lived experience or promptings...

"They just go to you and give you love, unasked for, and it's regenerated, without any input or feedback from you, necessarily, to bolster that."

The star can next be seen playing a grieving father in The Thing With Feathers and wants it to trigger an important conversation about how men often struggle to express their emotions.

He said: "I think it's really important to have the conversation around the male inability to manage emotion, and how easily co-opted it is into pretty awful causes, whether it be incel culture, riot culture, or blame culture - where your problem is not your problem, it's that person's over there.

"I think it's so important to realise, 'No, it's OK, you can take responsibility, you can also be a mess, you can also be vulnerable to human emotions, and you can feel stuff at a very profound level.'

"This is all there in this film. And it's also about the mess that men make of their lives without women."

The Sherlock actor admitted he is more "available emotionally" since becoming a father but he doesn't think The Thing With Feathers will only appeal to parents.

He said: "They say that the minute you have children, you become far more available emotionally, and everything's a lot closer.

"But, I mean, I'm nearly 50, so I've lived a bit. I've experienced grief. And anyone who's loved or lost can tap into this film."