A top broadcast journalism trainer has claimed a “gradual erosion” of real-life social skills, brought on by social media and smartphone use, could pose a “massive problem” for the news industry.

Jon Godel, chief executive of the Broadcast Journalism Training Council, said student journalists now need to be taken “step by step” through interactions with “real people” as a result of their modern lifestyles.

He pointed out that students now at university were born in 2000 and have “never known not to be able to text people to ask them a question”. Facebook launched in 2004 and three years later the first iPhone arrived.