The idea of getting your oldest child smartphone has long felt inevitable, Daisy Greenwell said. But at the beginning of last year, when her daughter was 8 years old, she filled her with fear. When she talked to other parents, “everyone generally said,” Yes, it’s a nightmare, but you don’t have a choice, “Mrs. Greenwell, 41.
She decided to try it. My friend Clare Fernyhough shared her concern about the addictive features of smartphones and the impact of social media on mental health, so they created the WhatsApp group that strategars. Then Mrs. Greenwell, who lives in the countryside Suffolka in the east of England, posted her thoughts on Instagram.
“What if we could change the social norm so that in our school, our country, our country was a special choice to make your child a smartphone at 11,” she wrote. “What if we could withstand until he was 14 or 16?” Added a link to the WhatsApp group.
The post was viral. Within 24 hours, the group was rewritten with adherence to the parents who touched. Today has more than 124,000 parents of children in more than 13,000 British schools signed A pact created by a free smartphone, a charity organization established by Mrs. Greenwell, her husband Joe Ryrie and Mrs. Fernyhough. Sounds: “The first in the best interest of my child and our community, I will wait at least until the end of the 9th year to get them a smartphone.” (Year 9 is equivalent to American eighth grade.)
Movement is in harmony SA a wider shift in attitudes in BritainAs evidence of the harm that represents brain development by smartphone addictions and the algorithm -powered social media. In one overview Last year, most respondents – 69 percent – felt that social media negatively influenced children under 15 years. Almost half of their parents said they tried to limit the time the children spent on the phones.
Meanwhile the police and intelligence They warned against the stream of extreme and violent content that addresses children online, trend examined in hit television adolescence, in which the schoolboy is accused of murder after being exposed to online misogyn. It happened to Britain watched most show and on Monday Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with their creators In Downing Street and told them he watched it with his son and daughter. But he also said, “This is not a challenge that politicians can easily legislate.”
Other governments in Europe have been reducing the use of children with children. In February, Denmark announced plans for disabling smartphones in schoolsWhile France banned smartphones in primary schools in 2018. Norway plans to promote a minimum age on social media.
Meanwhile, the British government seemed to be wary of interference. Josh Macalister, Labor Legislature, tried to introduce a legal requirement that all schools in England free of charge. But the account was watered After the government explained that it did not support the ban, they claim that the directors should decide.
Some parents feel that it is necessary to act, is urgent, especially because technology companies, including a meta that own Facebook and Instagram, and X, formerly Twitter, have ended operations control of facts that many experts claim to enable misinformation and hateful manifestations.
“We have no years to change things,” said Vicky Allen, 46, mother from Henfield in southern England. “It feels we must be we.”
She and girlfriend Julia Cassidy (46) successfully led the campaign for the elementary school of their children to limit telephone use after Mrs. Cassidy watched and Channel document 4 About smartphones in schools and then came across a childhood without a smartphone. Mrs. Cassidy is going to give her son a phone when he was 11 but said, “I just made a very big turn U.” Now he plans to give him a phone that can only be used for calls and texts.
The strength of parents collectively delays smartphones, Mrs. Greenwell said because she isolated children before the pressure of peers. “This problem is not so complicated,” she said. “If you have other people around you who also do the same, it’s actually amazing, beautifully simple.”
“Most people just want to keep their children safe”
Recently, Friday morning, dozens of parents gathered in the auditorium of North London elementary school at Nova Eden, a regional childhood leader without a smartphone.
She described surprising data-that is the average twelve-year-old in Britain, for example, on a smartphone 21 hours a week and that 76 percent of 12 to 15 years spend most of their free time on the screens. She also talked about the discovery research of the impact of the use of a smartphone.
Mrs. Eden quoted a study showing the degree of anxiety, depression and self -harm among teenagers who have been dramatically promoting since the time the social media was introduced. “These children are fighting and needing our help,” said Mrs. Eden. “I know how hard it is, but we have to be those who stand up and say it’s not good for you.”
Mrs. Eden, 44, described that she was trying to find the right balance for her own children aged 5, 10 and 13.
“At that time, I went through my child and saw a change in him and his friends,” she said.
Jane Palmer, Director of Colindale School, acknowledged that some parents were skeptical about the restrictions of the use of a smartphone or for disabling school facilities, as it will do from September.
Some argue that the facility can provide social independence and allow them to contact their children in an emergency. Others feel that parental checks go far enough to ensure security online.
But the conversations between parents began to make a way of change, said Mrs. Palmer. During the presentation, she described how a former student died suicide after being bullied online.
“It can be complicated and of course not everyone will support it,” she said about the ban. “But at the end of the day I think most people just want to keep their children safe.”
Colindale is in the Barnet district that announced in February plans to become the first a neighborhood in Britain Disable smartphones at all of their public schools. This initiative will affect about 63,000 children.
Eton, one of the most elite private schools in Britain, announced last year that new students would be forbidden From bringing smartphones and instead they would be released with Nokia phones that can only text and call.
In Suffolk, the founders of the children’s smartphones without a smartphone realize that their success attracted their parents to their affairs partly thanks to the applications of social media and the news on which they spread the word.
“There are a lot of positive things about this technology,” Ryrie said. “We are not trying to say that technology is bad, just that we have to have a conversation as a company about when it is appropriate for children to have unlimited access to these things.”
