Spike Lee thinks kids spend too much time on their phones.

The 69-year-old film director has admitted to being an "old fuddy-duddy", observing that kids these days spend far too much time in front of a screen.

Spike - who has Satchel, 31, and Jackson, 29, with his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee - told Variety: "The kids of my generation didn't have any video games and s***, so we made up games to play on the street."

The acclaimed director has fond memories of playing in the street as a child - but he believes things have changed markedly since his youth.

He reflected: "I don't want to sound like an old fuddy-duddy but I'm an old fuddy-duddy, but kids used to get together and play on the streets, adults had nothing to do with it, and during summertime you'd have to be back before the lights come on. We played Bootys Up, stickball, stoop ball, you name it."

Spike feels something has been "lost" amid the rise of smartphones.

The filmmaker said: "We could be here for eight years talking about technology, and I'm not going to say it's all bad, but there is something lost.

"During summertime, you're too young to have a job so you're just running down the streets and, like the Lee family, if you had relatives down South, your a** would be shipped down South!"

Meanwhile, Spike previously admitted that he felt "depressed" while making Malcolm X.

The filmmaker helmed the 1992 biographical drama film about the African-American activist - but Spike was left "broke" after spending "half [his] salary" on the project.

The director - who bickered with the movie studio over the budget and running time of the film - told The Hollywood Reporter: "That movie almost killed me when Warner Bros. let the bond company take over the film in post-production and shut it down.

"That's probably the most I've been depressed in my life with the exception of my mother dying. Half my salary went into the movie. I was broke."

Spike viewed the movie as a passion project, and he eventually approached some of his showbiz pals in a bid to finance the film.

He said: "It hit me like a ton of bricks: I know some African Americans who've got some money. I made a list and I got the money."