If you don’t want to give your child a phone just don’t.
Why “call for” it? Just do it.
Do they know that they *already* have the choice to not give their children smartphones?
If parents actually meant this then they’d stop handing over their iPhone to their kids to watch Cocomelon the moment they tantrum and stop rushing out to buy the latest iPhone 1938475 Max Pro or whatever when little Johnny becomes old enough to scream that ‘everyone else has one at school!’
Simply saying something means a grand total of absolutely nothing if you don’t actually then act upon it.
It seems to me that some Parents are unable to enforce a no smart-phone rule due to their kids facing peer pressure to have one, so the solution for those parents is to petition the Government to ban smartphones for all kids… Is that right ?
Hmm… The search for the Evil Influence that makes kids so awful, and not a bit like we were when we were their age continues.
Parents lack parenting skills and want government to parent the country for them.
There are many things to complain about the government… but this sounds like a choice for the individual.
Just get your kid one of those “kosher” phones where you can choose what apps to have pre-installed and it’s otherwise completely locked down.
What the comments here miss, and likely the parents calling for this don’t understand, is the insidious nature of marketing tracking that takes place behind the scenes on apps.
Companies will have access to gently nudge very young minds in directions they want, start building data pictures of people, uae thay to their advantage to push products and ideals.
I will not get my children a smart phone. They will need to buy it for themselves. I will try and educate them about how what they do is not private.
It would be better to educate parents so they can educate their children adequately. A lot of parents know it’s a bad idea but probably don’t grasp the full “why”. Not understanding makes it difficult to explain why the answer is “no, I’m not buying you a smart phone”.
People stating that parents get the government to parent…
Funny thing is that the government tells you what to do at the same time….
What’s really frustrating about this is that it’s already available infront of them, IOS and Android give you the capability to make phones child friendly, to track what they see and what they can access…There does not need to be any involvement from the government.
It’s a sad in what happened with Brianna, and it probably could have been massively prevented but there was so much more at play than just 2 teenagers using a phone to access things that they shouldn’t.
Can we educate parents and children better with technology, absolutely…Should we ban it for certain ages? No.
Don’t give your kid a phone. I know it gets harder as they get older but it’s still your responsibility and decision to not give them one. And other parents have the right to their decision to give one. Just how it is.
Seems like they’re calling for something that’s already in their power aren’t they? Just don’t give your kids phones.
I’m dreading the day my boys start asking for a phone. They don’t have any interest in it right now but that will change, they’ll be 12 soon. They have autism so they see things differently and don’t watch tv either. They dislike tv – yes I’m not lying lol. So they have no media influence over them.
I have been saying for a while but the best solution for smart tech is to age restrict it and put that onus of age restriction on the Smartphone manufacturers.
We should have age-rated devices, using the same age ratings as media has (12, 15, 18) and this information would be stored on the device in its settings.
This would allow the phones browsers to send the age ratings of the devices to websites in the agent meta.
We then must legislate that websites include an age rating on their sites also, its a simple one line of html code, very easy to do, much easier than say the cookies banners were.
This line of code says what age rating the site is, and has a redirect url, if the site has no age rating it is assumed to be 18+ automatically.
Then we could age-restrict the content children are being fed, and stop them accessing porn.
I am in full support of a smartphone-free childhood. I think they’re terrible for a child’s social and cognitive development. As a teacher, I see a lot of this in primary and secondary school.
I also don’t think it should take government regulation to achieve – just parental responsibility. Parents self-organising on WhatsApp is a good way of doing it. I can understand from a parent’s perspective that the social pressures of their kid getting a phone is massive, but if enough parents group together and collectively agree they’re not going to do it, then no smartphone becomes the cultural norm in that particular community. While there will still be other sources of pressure to get a phone, it’s massively lessened given that peer pressure is the main source.
It’s great to see what the parents in the article are doing.
I’m old enough that I had a Bebo and later a MySpace account when I was in my teens. I spent a lot of time talking to my friends on MSN Messenger too! I don’t think either of these platforms were particularly damaging, but what you could actually do on them was pretty limited. They were text-communication platforms primarily, and we only had one computer in the house so everything I did was in full view of my parents. Not really comparable to what social media can do today.
I don’t think I’d support a blanket ban on social media for under-16s, but this is where I do think more regulation is needed.
There should be a call for people to read articles and improve their reading proficiency given the number of comments in this post thinking the parents are calling for the government to intervene.
They’re not. The government isn’t even mentioned once. There’s a reference to Esther Ghey’s previous call for a ban but that’s a reference, not a source for the call.
The story is about how a small number of parents started off encouraging not giving children smartphones and how that message has seemingly spread, with more thinking the same. It’s not asking for a legal ban but an action (or inaction) about giving children smartphones.
Ironically, this is what a lot of the commentators here would agree with… If they only read the article.
My kid has gotten to 9 before asking for a phone, literally everyone in his class has one. We’re still resisting but now have an old one to give him when he’s on an overnight trip somewhere or doing something not routine. It’s controlled by Google family or whatever it’s called and you can lock pretty much everything down, including screen time.
Not giving in to WhatsApp or anything like that yet, we get countless emails from the school about the kids being dicks to each other via messaging..
Why can’t you just give your kid one of those Nokia 3310 type phones?
Them damn youngsters with there gosh damn portable phones, when I was a young whippersnapper we didn’t have them, must be the reason they are so much worse then my generation.
In my day, kid with a mobile was a sure sign of family issues.
Risk of abduction by estranged father, etc.
If you were one of these kids who required a phone, you’d try and hide this. Keep it a secret.
It’s funny how things flip over.
Posting a counter opinion to “blame the parents” is the easiest way to get downvotes on this place. But hey… I’ll try.
Telling kids they can’t have a device that all their friends have sounds simple: it’s not.
My son’s secondary school told us that he needed to have a smartphone back in 2015. I bought him a Windows Phone and locked it down with excessive Parental Controls. He resented not having the same apps and games as his peers. Controlling the Internet was tough and I encountered loads of functional issues from choosing the most restrictive path. It was a difficult technical task and I don’t blame any parent who’s not up to it. Eventually I gave up on Microsoft and chose Apple. The same issues and lack of granularity applied.
We stopped my son from engaging with social media until he was 18 and frankly I’m not without regret. I definitely didn’t get the balance right. He’s a popular kid, but he’s missed out along the way due to how much of modern social interaction takes place through social media and the shared experience of mobile devices and the internet. He’s 20 now and finding his way as “late bloomer” on this stuff, but I won’t pretend I got anything 100% right.
Telling parents that there is an easy way to navigate these challenges is a lie. The technology isn’t there to support you, so there’s always massive compromises to be made and I’m not going to pretend I know the answers even now.
No-one parents a kid in isolation, so discussions around better ways to integrate children into modern society and enable access to technology are vital. Shutting parents down with “it’s not our job to parent your kid” is just about the dumbest thing we can do.
Why not not just a monitoring tool installed on them? One like Qustodio is good, also free for one device
I’ve got my nephews (6 and 4) staying with me and their grandparents during half term at the moment and they seem totally addicted to their tablets. We’ve been taking them for active days out during the daytime and encouraging them to go on supervised bike rides, do dance routines to Danny Go etc, but as soon as they have ‘free time’ they’re straight onto something called Roblox on their tablets and they absolutely rage and panic when they run out of charge. It’s really difficult to coax them to play with non-screen toys such as lego, puzzles, hot wheels etc unless an adult sits with them and plays too. Their default is to want a screen under their noses. I presume that’s what happens when they’re at home because my sister and brother-in-law both work really unsociable hours and they’re used to entertaining themselves that way. For the past few birthdays and Christmases my oldest nephew has said all he wants are Robux currency for his Roblox game 🫤.
To give or not to give. A smart phone can pose a danger to a child, yet it can also save their lives in the right situation. And they have been used as evidence now to solve many crimes.
I wish we go back to the time where we were not connected and were living perfectly good lives without having to check up our phones every now and then
Bring back Symbian OS! You can even use Symbian phones today just for call, texts, music and a decent camera… on 2G
Interesting article, there has always been grounds to remove access to social media until the age of 16, smart phones however are a bigger issue, one which I think will grow over the next year or two through Ai. I expect to see more regular and enforced no phones in school bans across the uk.
It’s not the smartphones that are the major issue, it’s social media. Appreciate the article does mention this but it’s being lost in the noise.
Social media companies should be regulated and not allow children under the age of 16 (or likely higher) access, like smoking. Whilst people will obviously skirt the rules, like smoking behind the bike sheds, having some regulations empowers parents to say no.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again.
One desktop computer, in the living room, screen facing towards the room.
Parents have the password and monitoring software.
Stop trying to pass utterly ridiculous draconian laws that are completely unenforceable. What happens if a child is caught with a phone? A fine and jail time for the parents?
Well fucking do it then, you are the parent, take it away
It’s the same as all this website age verification crap etc they are comming out with,.
How about parents actually fucking be parents, it’s actually really easy to monitor your kids devices if you need to give them one if you actually spent 10 minutes looking into it.
Everyones just a lazy cunt now. Expecting other people to do it all for them.
And yet it’s the twenty/thirty somethings that are the ones walking around with prams, dogs etc and their faces stuck in the phone continually.
Odd really and maybe where i live is an exception, but kids… not so much
I agree all the features of a smart phone probably should be kept from children under 13-14 but they can be left locked down so they haven’t got access. It’s really not hard.
The bigger problem is tablets , which lots of school districts in America are mandating , as per contract with tech companies .
34 comments
If you don’t want to give your child a phone just don’t.
Why “call for” it? Just do it.
Do they know that they *already* have the choice to not give their children smartphones?
If parents actually meant this then they’d stop handing over their iPhone to their kids to watch Cocomelon the moment they tantrum and stop rushing out to buy the latest iPhone 1938475 Max Pro or whatever when little Johnny becomes old enough to scream that ‘everyone else has one at school!’
Simply saying something means a grand total of absolutely nothing if you don’t actually then act upon it.
It seems to me that some Parents are unable to enforce a no smart-phone rule due to their kids facing peer pressure to have one, so the solution for those parents is to petition the Government to ban smartphones for all kids… Is that right ?
Hmm… The search for the Evil Influence that makes kids so awful, and not a bit like we were when we were their age continues.
Parents lack parenting skills and want government to parent the country for them.
There are many things to complain about the government… but this sounds like a choice for the individual.
Just get your kid one of those “kosher” phones where you can choose what apps to have pre-installed and it’s otherwise completely locked down.
What the comments here miss, and likely the parents calling for this don’t understand, is the insidious nature of marketing tracking that takes place behind the scenes on apps.
Companies will have access to gently nudge very young minds in directions they want, start building data pictures of people, uae thay to their advantage to push products and ideals.
I will not get my children a smart phone. They will need to buy it for themselves. I will try and educate them about how what they do is not private.
It would be better to educate parents so they can educate their children adequately. A lot of parents know it’s a bad idea but probably don’t grasp the full “why”. Not understanding makes it difficult to explain why the answer is “no, I’m not buying you a smart phone”.
People stating that parents get the government to parent…
Funny thing is that the government tells you what to do at the same time….
What’s really frustrating about this is that it’s already available infront of them, IOS and Android give you the capability to make phones child friendly, to track what they see and what they can access…There does not need to be any involvement from the government.
It’s a sad in what happened with Brianna, and it probably could have been massively prevented but there was so much more at play than just 2 teenagers using a phone to access things that they shouldn’t.
Can we educate parents and children better with technology, absolutely…Should we ban it for certain ages? No.
Don’t give your kid a phone. I know it gets harder as they get older but it’s still your responsibility and decision to not give them one. And other parents have the right to their decision to give one. Just how it is.
Seems like they’re calling for something that’s already in their power aren’t they? Just don’t give your kids phones.
I’m dreading the day my boys start asking for a phone. They don’t have any interest in it right now but that will change, they’ll be 12 soon. They have autism so they see things differently and don’t watch tv either. They dislike tv – yes I’m not lying lol. So they have no media influence over them.
I have been saying for a while but the best solution for smart tech is to age restrict it and put that onus of age restriction on the Smartphone manufacturers.
We should have age-rated devices, using the same age ratings as media has (12, 15, 18) and this information would be stored on the device in its settings.
This would allow the phones browsers to send the age ratings of the devices to websites in the agent meta.
We then must legislate that websites include an age rating on their sites also, its a simple one line of html code, very easy to do, much easier than say the cookies banners were.
This line of code says what age rating the site is, and has a redirect url, if the site has no age rating it is assumed to be 18+ automatically.
Then we could age-restrict the content children are being fed, and stop them accessing porn.
I am in full support of a smartphone-free childhood. I think they’re terrible for a child’s social and cognitive development. As a teacher, I see a lot of this in primary and secondary school.
I also don’t think it should take government regulation to achieve – just parental responsibility. Parents self-organising on WhatsApp is a good way of doing it. I can understand from a parent’s perspective that the social pressures of their kid getting a phone is massive, but if enough parents group together and collectively agree they’re not going to do it, then no smartphone becomes the cultural norm in that particular community. While there will still be other sources of pressure to get a phone, it’s massively lessened given that peer pressure is the main source.
It’s great to see what the parents in the article are doing.
I’m old enough that I had a Bebo and later a MySpace account when I was in my teens. I spent a lot of time talking to my friends on MSN Messenger too! I don’t think either of these platforms were particularly damaging, but what you could actually do on them was pretty limited. They were text-communication platforms primarily, and we only had one computer in the house so everything I did was in full view of my parents. Not really comparable to what social media can do today.
I don’t think I’d support a blanket ban on social media for under-16s, but this is where I do think more regulation is needed.
There should be a call for people to read articles and improve their reading proficiency given the number of comments in this post thinking the parents are calling for the government to intervene.
They’re not. The government isn’t even mentioned once. There’s a reference to Esther Ghey’s previous call for a ban but that’s a reference, not a source for the call.
The story is about how a small number of parents started off encouraging not giving children smartphones and how that message has seemingly spread, with more thinking the same. It’s not asking for a legal ban but an action (or inaction) about giving children smartphones.
Ironically, this is what a lot of the commentators here would agree with… If they only read the article.
My kid has gotten to 9 before asking for a phone, literally everyone in his class has one. We’re still resisting but now have an old one to give him when he’s on an overnight trip somewhere or doing something not routine. It’s controlled by Google family or whatever it’s called and you can lock pretty much everything down, including screen time.
Not giving in to WhatsApp or anything like that yet, we get countless emails from the school about the kids being dicks to each other via messaging..
Why can’t you just give your kid one of those Nokia 3310 type phones?
Them damn youngsters with there gosh damn portable phones, when I was a young whippersnapper we didn’t have them, must be the reason they are so much worse then my generation.
In my day, kid with a mobile was a sure sign of family issues.
Risk of abduction by estranged father, etc.
If you were one of these kids who required a phone, you’d try and hide this. Keep it a secret.
It’s funny how things flip over.
Posting a counter opinion to “blame the parents” is the easiest way to get downvotes on this place. But hey… I’ll try.
Telling kids they can’t have a device that all their friends have sounds simple: it’s not.
My son’s secondary school told us that he needed to have a smartphone back in 2015. I bought him a Windows Phone and locked it down with excessive Parental Controls. He resented not having the same apps and games as his peers. Controlling the Internet was tough and I encountered loads of functional issues from choosing the most restrictive path. It was a difficult technical task and I don’t blame any parent who’s not up to it. Eventually I gave up on Microsoft and chose Apple. The same issues and lack of granularity applied.
We stopped my son from engaging with social media until he was 18 and frankly I’m not without regret. I definitely didn’t get the balance right. He’s a popular kid, but he’s missed out along the way due to how much of modern social interaction takes place through social media and the shared experience of mobile devices and the internet. He’s 20 now and finding his way as “late bloomer” on this stuff, but I won’t pretend I got anything 100% right.
Telling parents that there is an easy way to navigate these challenges is a lie. The technology isn’t there to support you, so there’s always massive compromises to be made and I’m not going to pretend I know the answers even now.
No-one parents a kid in isolation, so discussions around better ways to integrate children into modern society and enable access to technology are vital. Shutting parents down with “it’s not our job to parent your kid” is just about the dumbest thing we can do.
Why not not just a monitoring tool installed on them? One like Qustodio is good, also free for one device
I’ve got my nephews (6 and 4) staying with me and their grandparents during half term at the moment and they seem totally addicted to their tablets. We’ve been taking them for active days out during the daytime and encouraging them to go on supervised bike rides, do dance routines to Danny Go etc, but as soon as they have ‘free time’ they’re straight onto something called Roblox on their tablets and they absolutely rage and panic when they run out of charge. It’s really difficult to coax them to play with non-screen toys such as lego, puzzles, hot wheels etc unless an adult sits with them and plays too. Their default is to want a screen under their noses. I presume that’s what happens when they’re at home because my sister and brother-in-law both work really unsociable hours and they’re used to entertaining themselves that way. For the past few birthdays and Christmases my oldest nephew has said all he wants are Robux currency for his Roblox game 🫤.
To give or not to give. A smart phone can pose a danger to a child, yet it can also save their lives in the right situation. And they have been used as evidence now to solve many crimes.
I wish we go back to the time where we were not connected and were living perfectly good lives without having to check up our phones every now and then
Bring back Symbian OS! You can even use Symbian phones today just for call, texts, music and a decent camera… on 2G
Interesting article, there has always been grounds to remove access to social media until the age of 16, smart phones however are a bigger issue, one which I think will grow over the next year or two through Ai. I expect to see more regular and enforced no phones in school bans across the uk.
It’s not the smartphones that are the major issue, it’s social media. Appreciate the article does mention this but it’s being lost in the noise.
Social media companies should be regulated and not allow children under the age of 16 (or likely higher) access, like smoking. Whilst people will obviously skirt the rules, like smoking behind the bike sheds, having some regulations empowers parents to say no.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again.
One desktop computer, in the living room, screen facing towards the room.
Parents have the password and monitoring software.
Stop trying to pass utterly ridiculous draconian laws that are completely unenforceable. What happens if a child is caught with a phone? A fine and jail time for the parents?
Well fucking do it then, you are the parent, take it away
It’s the same as all this website age verification crap etc they are comming out with,.
How about parents actually fucking be parents, it’s actually really easy to monitor your kids devices if you need to give them one if you actually spent 10 minutes looking into it.
Everyones just a lazy cunt now. Expecting other people to do it all for them.
And yet it’s the twenty/thirty somethings that are the ones walking around with prams, dogs etc and their faces stuck in the phone continually.
Odd really and maybe where i live is an exception, but kids… not so much
I agree all the features of a smart phone probably should be kept from children under 13-14 but they can be left locked down so they haven’t got access. It’s really not hard.
The bigger problem is tablets , which lots of school districts in America are mandating , as per contract with tech companies .