10 days ago, after having coffee with a mother in my 8-year-old daughter's class and talking about giving her child a smartphone, I panicked and texted my friend Claire Furniho: “Should we do this?” It was sent.
Her answer was a resounding “yes.” We both have daughters – mine is 8 and hers is 9 – and the realization that they are about to step into the world of smartphones seems strange and scary. I feel it.
It was announced this week that mobile phone use will be banned in schools in England, with new guidance giving teachers more powers to prevent smartphone disruption in schools.
Currently, 55% of 8-11 year olds in the UK own a mobile phone, and 97% of 12 year olds own a mobile phone. The pressure to give children a mobile phone is enormous and usually falls on children in grades 5 and 6, the last primary school year before they move on to secondary school. This is a time when teens are moving much of their social interactions online, such as organizing meet-ups, so kids who don't have a cell phone likely feel like they're missing out. right.
No one wants their child to feel left out, especially because the parent made a parenting decision that goes against the grain and withholds something they desperately want to fit in. But on the other hand, handing kids over directly to the online world, where bullying, pornography, grooming, and the anxiety that comes with scrolling and social media, is equally unappealing. And unlike his decade ago, when smartphones were starting to become ubiquitous, the scientific evidence is now much clearer. The younger a person gets a cell phone, the higher the incidence of mental illness.
This feeling of being on a doomed journey along with everyone else, pretending everything is fine, led Claire and I to WhatsApp Parents United for Free Childhood Smartphones. This was the impetus for starting the movement. We wanted to feel like we weren't alone, and we wanted to empower each other to endure what we knew in our hearts wasn't right, even if society was against us.
On the first day, it was just the two of us and we were mostly silent. Then, in a fit of enthusiasm from Tiger Mom, [I posted]{href='https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fp%2FC25Tt2EoVe4%2F&data=05%7C02%7Crebecca.holman%40graziamagazine.co .uk%7C25847465dc7e4e23fcb308dc314724a9%7C0e79f3f34eeb48ed815e2876c379e863%7C0%7C0%7C638439432133515330%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC 4w LjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=U%2FoqkOqUitIzs5Pzgm8yMKGZYEffN5IDaRRaTKWSH%2Fw%3D&reserved=0' target='_blank' rel='no referrer noopener'} Write about your feelings on Instagram and include a link to a WhatsApp group to invite others who feel the same way. Then it was the kids' bedtime, so I put my phone downstairs and went about my nightly task of tucking my three kids into their pajamas and beds.
When I got back downstairs it had gone bananas. Hundreds of people liked and shared the post, and hundreds more joined the WhatsApp group. There was now a heated discussion about the strangeness of the world, which proposed giving children the most powerful and addictive technology on the planet. he asked.
Woman's Hour host Emma Barnett shared it and messaged me to discuss my fears for my children. Telegraph columnist Bryony Gordon posted: “I want to be one of these Daisies!” My daughter is going to middle school this year, so she's refraining from letting her have a cell phone. ” and joined the group. Carrie Johnson said, “I love this and completely agree,” and asked how she could help, and she agreed. Meanwhile, actress Sophie Winkleman has reached out to express support and offer her guidance. It was a surreal evening on a sofa in Suffolk.
By the next night, the WhatsApp group had reached its 1,000 person limit, so we turned it into a WhatsApp community to allow more people to join and invited everyone to start their own local group . It was a magical moment to see these groups appear before my eyes, from East London to Somerset, Scotland to Kent. Far from being alone, there were thousands of people across the country feeling the same passionately as we did. It felt like a dam had burst and this was the conversation I had been waiting for.
Thousands of people reached out to us asking for help, and Claire and I started looking for ways to make the most of this momentum while juggling our day jobs. Should we join Esther Gee, mother of murdered teenage girl Brianna Gee, in her mission to ban smartphones for under-16s? Should I start a petition? Should parents make an agreement to refrain from giving their children smartphones?
I had so many ideas swirling around and realized there were already great organizations out there like Delay Television who had spent years working on the Parent Pledge. Since we are all working for the same purpose, there is no point in duplicating each other's work.
The ultimate sweet spot for us is to get a group of parents in your child's class to agree not to have smartphones, removing peer pressure. We realized that building local communities through WhatsApp and encouraging parents to start having these awkward conversations with each other was where we could make the biggest impact. WhatsApp classes feel like the ultimate frontier. No one wants to feel like their parenting style is being criticized. Therefore, a caring, non-judgmental and collaborative approach is key.
5,000 people joined the WhatsApp group in 10 days. We encourage schools to start establishing Smartphone Free Children's Groups, which are being established across the country. If people can find each other and start a conversation between themselves and their schools about this issue, change can happen. Parents in Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland, came together and introduced a “smartphone ban” in primary schools across the town last May. Six months later, Irish Education Minister Norma Foley announced new guidance encouraging all primary schools in Ireland to consult parents about introducing a voluntary smartphone ban.
This kind of change comes from the bottom up, not from giant corporations making millions off of what kids click and scroll through. It's up to us. If you too feel that childhood is too short to be spent on a smartphone, join us.
Instagram @smartphonefreechildhood.
Find your local WhatsApp group: https://linktr.ee/smartphonefreechildhood
Photo: Daisy Greenwell and husband Joe Reilly, by Alistair Bartlett.
