BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Try saying “no” when a child asks for a smartphone. What comes next, as parents everywhere can attest, begins with some variation of: “Everyone has one. Why I can not?
But what if no pre-teen in sight has one – what if having a smartphone was weird? This is the end game for a growing number of parents across Europe who are concerned about evidence that smartphone use among young children compromises your safety and mental health — and share the conviction that there is strength in numbers.
From Spain to Britain and Ireland, parents are flooding WhatsApp and Telegram groups with plans to not only keep smartphones out of schools, but also to link arms and refuse to buy the devices for their children before – or even during – adolescence.
After being inspired by a conversation in a Barcelona park with other mothers, Elisabet García Permanyer started a chat group last fall to share information about the dangers of Internet access for children with families at their children’s school.
The group, called “Cellphone Free Teenage,” expanded rapidly and now includes more than 10,000 members. The most committed parents are pushing for other parents to agree not to give their children smartphones before they turn 16. After organizing online, they facilitate real-world conversations between concerned parents to further their crusade.
“When I started this, I just hoped to find four other like-minded families, but it took off and kept growing and growing and growing,” says García Permanyer. “My goal was to try to join forces with other parents so that we could delay the arrival of smartphones. I said, ‘I’m going to try so my kids aren’t the only ones who don’t have one.'”
It’s not just the parents. Police and public health experts have sounded the alarm about a rise in violent and pornographic videos watched by children via handheld devices. The Spanish government took note of the momentum and banned smartphones entirely in primary schools in January. Now they can only be activated in high school, which starts at age 12, if the teacher deems it necessary for an educational activity.
The movement in Britain gained momentum this year after the mother of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey, killed by two teenagers last year, began demanding that children under 16 be blocked from accessing social media on smartphones.
“It seems like we all know that (buying smartphones) is a bad decision for our children, but that the social norm has not yet been met,” posted Daisy Greenwell, a mother of three children under 10, from Suffolk, England. Her Instagram earlier this year. “What if we could change the social norm so that in our school, in our city, in our country, it would be a strange choice to give your child a smartphone at 11? What if we could wait until they were 14 or 16?”
She and a friend, Clare Reynolds, created a WhatsApp group called Parents United for a Childhood Without Smartphones, with three people. In four days, 2,000 people joined the group, requiring Greenwell and Reynolds to separate dozens of groups by location. There is now a chat group for every British county.
Parents who mobilize to ban children’s smartphones have a long way to go in changing what is considered “normal”. By age 12, most children have smartphones, statistics from the three countries show. In Spain, a quarter of children have a cell phone at age 10 and almost half at age 11. At age 12, this percentage rises to 75%. British media regulator Ofcom said 55% of children in the UK owned a smartphone between the ages of 8 and 11, with the figure rising to 97% by age 12.
Parents and schools who managed to flip the paradigm in their communities told the Associated Press that change became possible the moment they realized they were not alone.
In Greystones, Ireland, this moment came after all eight primary school principals in the town signed and published a letter last year that discouraged parents from buying smartphones for their students. The parents themselves then voluntarily signed written commitments promising not to allow their children to use the devices.
“The discussion ended almost overnight,” says Christina Capatina, 38, a mother of two pre-teen daughters in Greystones who signed the pledge and says there were almost no smartphones in schools this academic year.
Something like a consensus built over years between institutions, governmentsparents and others that children’s smartphone use is linked to bullying, suicidal ideation, anxiety and loss of concentration necessary for learning. China moved last year to limit children’s use of smartphones, while France has a banning smartphones in schools for children aged six to 15.
The pressure to control smartphones in Spain comes amid an increase in cases of children watching online pornography, sharing videos of sexual violence or creating “deeply fake” pornographic images of female classmates, using generative artificial intelligence tools. The Spanish government claims that 25% of children aged 12 and under and 50% of children aged 15 and under have been exposed to online pornography.
The dangers have produced school smartphone bans and online safety laws. But that doesn’t address what kids do outside of work hours.
“What I try to emphasize to other headteachers is the importance of joining the school next door to yours,” says Rachel Harper, headteacher at St Patrick’s National School, one of eight in Greystones that encourages parents to prevent their children from using smartphones. . “There’s a little more traction in that regard because all the parents in the area are talking about it.”
The home isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic offered a firsthand look at their children staring at screens and being clever at hiding what they saw there — and what found them.
But if kids can’t have smartphones, are parents reducing their time online? This is difficult, many parents say, because they manage families and work online.
Laura Borne, mother of five- and six-year-olds at Greystones who have never been introduced to smartphones, says she is aware of the need to model behavior online – and should probably cut back.
“I’m trying my best,” she says. But, as with the children she has, the pressures are there. And they won’t go away.
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Kellman reported from London.
