10/9/24
I was out for dinner with two girlfriends in March this year when one of them mentioned the ‘Smartphone Free Childhood’ (SFC) grassroots parent movement. “Yes! It’s not just me!” I thought as I took a look later at the SFC Instagram account. My 7 year old had recently asked me what age she would be when she got an iPhone - needless to say she was disappointed with my answer!
Soon after, I was recommended Jonathan Haidt’s new book, ‘The Anxious Generation’, within which he argues that the steady increase in phone-based childhoods and the decline of play-based childhoods have led to “an epidemic of mental illness”.
In between the day job as an Educational Psychologist and the 24/7 job of parenting three young children, I slowly carved out some space to explore this further. Jonathan Haidt’s book has triggered a storm of discussion and debate between researchers, mental health professionals, schools, families and tech companies. Is there a causal link or just correlational? Is there enough evidence to take action? Do we wait for the Government, tech companies and schools to take action? What do we need to know now and do now as parents?
If you haven’t yet engaged with the debate or the research and want a brief accessible summary of evidence then I would recommend pages 36-38 of the UK 2040 Options policy project ‘Education: the ideas’ report which was published yesterday by Nesta in partnership with the Behavioural Insights Team. They propose a future with ‘safe phones’ for under-16s. Alternatively, if you want more details and more research studies, you could delve into the House of Commons Education Committee’s report ‘Screen time: impacts on education and wellbeing’ (May 2024).
Meanwhile, the SFC movement has grown, in their words, “from a viral thing to an actual thing”. They have recognised, importantly, that whilst further research is needed and the cogs of Government and tech companies turn slowly, the children who are children right now, our children, need schools and parents to take action. We can’t wait for the Online Safety Act to come fully into force by 2025, we can’t wait for Ofcom to take action against technology companies, we can’t wait for HMD’s Better Phone Project.
For many of us, our children have already started asking for smartphones. For some they already have them. The latest figures from Ofcom (April 2024) suggest a quarter of 5 year olds already have their own mobile phones, increasing to two-thirds of children by end of primary school. We didn’t have the evidence we do now about the impact of smartphones and social media on our children. We can also recognise the benefits of technology for our children, such as education apps, connecting safely with family and friends, giving neurodivergent children preferred methods to communicate and regulate. And sometimes our toddlers do just need to sit still long enough to let the barber cut their hair!
Sarah-Jane Blakemore (Prof of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Cambridge University) best known for her research on the teenage brain, was recently quoted in a Times article, “And when we’re talking about child development, I think erring on the side of caution is better. Regulate and restrict first, and then open things up if you find evidence that it’s not harmful”. From my own reading and experiences, I would agree. Whilst more research into the impact of smartphones and social media on child development is needed, it is pointing in one direction – delay use of smartphones and social media for children and support them to create healthy digital habits with the technology they use.
Today SFC launched their new digital Parent Pact – a quick and simple way parents can make a pact with themselves (no legal implications!) to delay buying their children smartphones until the end of Year 9.
Sounds simple. The reality is that it means standing up as a parent and pushing back against the current social norms of children getting smartphones whilst still at primary school or on transition to secondary school. It means risking social exclusion not just for our children but perhaps for us as parents too! But it also means that you’re taking this stance alongside others at your child’s school and in your local community. This is a collective-action problem where it becomes much easier for parents to act if they are not acting alone.
So I’ve signed it.
The reality also is, it’s not the perfect solution. We can’t now sit back and tick this off our to-do lists. We’d all like a silver bullet but signing an online pact to wait until the end of Year 9 is not it. We need to help children understand more about their brains and the impact of technology. We need to develop healthy digital habits in our homes. We need to prioritise physical wellbeing. We need to give our children real world opportunities to develop the life skills and employability skills we want them to have in the future. Delaying smartphones will not be the single antidote to supporting our children’s mental health.
And if we find evidence that smartphones and social media are not as harmful as currently proposed, or if tech companies and Government and schools can offer genuine protection from harm, we can re-evaluate. We can only parent with the information we have now – and right now my decision is to delay. Who is ready to come on this parenting journey with me?
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