Peer pressure in the classroom is a problem for any parent considering banning smartphones for their children.
So when the Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC) movement launched an online pledge to not allow children access to devices until they were at least 14 years old, thousands of parents saw the opportunity to rally moral support for the discussions ahead. were coming.
“It’s a way for parents to know they’re not alone in this,” said Mike Lawrence, 45, one of the signatories of the pact in primary law school. North Berwick school has the largest enrollment in Scotland, with 194 children.
Lawrence said the compact and its league table, which includes the names of schools but does not identify parents or children, would help “in those moments of reckoning, when it comes to children in the home.”
The pact, he said, had given renewed impetus to a WhatsApp group formed a few months after SFC was established this year. It was set up by two friends, Daisy Greenwell and Clare Fernyhough, who were looking to support each other in their decision to postpone buying smartphones for their children, and their WhatsApp group became a UK-wide network that has enabled the campaign. of subscription to the pact. .
A quarter of British schools have signed up to the pact, reaching more than 8,100 last week, according to SFC, with the top 30 enrollments predominating in primary schools. Around 37,000 parents have signed, representing more than 56,000 children.
Parents at a primary school among the top 10 signatories said the pact had helped reassure families that they were not alone.
“It’s hard if they’re the only ones,” said a parent at Pannal Primary School in North Yorkshire. “The idea is to bring together parents with similar points of view.”
According to research by media regulator Ofcom, 89% of 12-year-olds in the UK have their own smartphone.
SFC said there was a litany of concerns about smartphones Behind their campaign: the prevalence of harmful content online; the addictive nature of social media; distraction from school work; and the links between excessive smartphone use and mental illness.
Parents at Coleridge Primary School, the school with the largest enrollment in the pact in London, said the pledge, which states that signatories agree to “wait to give their children a smartphone until at least the end of Year 9 “. – had rejuvenated a WhatsApp group that had recently gone silent.
“There was a Coleridge (CFS WhatsApp group) but it was going a bit dormant,” said Charlotte Souter, 44, who signed the pact on behalf of her 11-year-old son. “But then the SFC movement made the pact and that was a tool for us to say ‘Okay, guys, let’s sign this.'”
Souter was joined by three parents with children in their final year at Coleridge, who don’t want their sons and daughters to feel isolated without a smartphone. They will go to high school with “brick” devices that can make calls and send and receive text messages.
“The concern is that my son will go into seventh grade and everyone will have a smartphone, and he will be the only one who won’t have one. That’s going to isolate him. That is why the pact is so important,” said Souter.
All four Coleridge parents cited a number of concerns about smartphone use, including incessant pinging from their older children’s phones; the continued presence of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate on social media despite being banned from most platforms; the impact on reading; and, more generally, how the social media landscape has changed since their older kids got smartphones, with TikTok and Snapchat becoming more influential.
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A parent from Coleridge said the distraction caused by smartphone notifications was overwhelming.
“I took my older children’s smartphones away and put them on silent next to my bed. But they are still pinging. It is constant. What is that doing to them?
At Coleridge, 167 children signed the pact, placing it in the top five schools in the UK alongside Law and Pannal. The place with the most enrollments is Berkhamsted School, a private nursery and secondary school in Hertfordshire.
Parents report a mixed reaction to their children’s engagement. Lawrence said her three children “know where they stand” and that the pact “makes it easier for them to have something to say to other kids when asked.”
At Coleridge, Souter said her son was “not happy”, while his partner Tilly Summers, 43, said her daughter was “a bit upset” but “understands” the decision. Another Coleridge mother, Tammy Incles, 50, said her 10-year-old twins understood there had been a shift against smartphones, even though their older siblings had them.
Morinade Akinbobola, 51, a mother and governor of Coleridge, as well as a signatory to the pact, said parents needed to lead by example.
“We all walk around with our cell phones. If we are going to ask children to control their behavior, parents must do it too.”
The underlying culture and behavior around smartphone use comes up a lot. SFC founders talk about trying to create change. “It’s not just about our children. “It’s about trying to be part of a change, a broader cultural change,” Summers said.
