A few years ago, I saw a baby (maybe two years old or even younger) in his stroller at the bus stop with a smartphone in his fat little hands.
I looked at him as he looked at the phone. At one point he lost interest and wailed.
Her young mother briefly looked up from her own phone, shoved a packet of crisps into her hands, adjusted the screen, and looked back at hers. After a while, knowing that it wouldn’t attract her attention, she did the same. It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen in my life.
Tanya Gold is haunted by the image of a child in his stroller holding a smartphone while his mother stares at her own screen.
No one can be a father of technology. God knows what will happen to that child.
My son is almost 11 years old and about to start high school. He has screen time once a week, but only if he does his homework, and I’ve noticed that he’s more likely to get cranky after that. So, no, despite considerable pressure to do so, I will not be buying him a smartphone when he starts big school.
I’m not the only one worried. Last month, 20 headteachers in St Albans, Hertfordshire, asked parents not to buy their children a smartphone until they were 14 years old. I go further; My son can’t have one until he’s 18 and has to buy it himself.
I consider myself a permissive mother, but for once I agree with Katharine Birbalsingh, ‘Britain’s strictest headteacher’, who says giving a child a smartphone ‘is the most dangerous thing you can do…every pedophile there is, every gang “A member of yours knows where your son lives.” And that’s not my only objection.
My son and I are looking for old Nokia phones because he’s going to need a phone and, he pouts, because he’ll be in the minority. Many parents manage to stick it out through elementary school, but 90 percent of kids will start high school with a smartphone.
I made my decision when I saw the baby at the bus stop and I haven’t seen anything since to change my mind.
Katharine Birbalsingh, dubbed “Britain’s strictest headmistress”, believes giving a child a smartphone is “the most dangerous thing you can do”
As far as I’m concerned, new technologies represent a danger to all children whose brains are not yet fully developed. Cases of childhood anxiety, along with many other conditions, are skyrocketing.
First, as Birbalsingh points out, there are the material dangers. Unless he is very attentive, it is unlikely that he will know what his child is looking at or who he is talking to.
Three in five children report that they have been contacted by people who have made them feel uncomfortable online.
My great fear is pornography. (If I had a daughter, they would be online predators.) The idea that the first thing my child will see about adult physical love will be an abusive movie on a smartphone is so terrifying that when I think about it, I sweat.
I don’t even want to think about how exposure to it affects young children’s sense of self and ability to love.
Then there are social networks. Three quarters of children aged 10 to 12 have an account on one of the big sites.
There are many horror stories about vulnerable children destroyed by this evil. Harassed girls who end their lives after encounters on WhatsApp; children who think they are ugly because they believe in Instagram filters; young people (especially children) radicalized by TikTok; the nightmare of sexting, when intimate photographs of girls are passed around in class.
All of this takes place in an online world where normal processes for resolving conflicts simply do not exist.
I made the decision in part because of my own experience with alcohol addiction. I know as well as anyone that the bigger your fantasy life, the smaller your real life will be, and online is at least partially a fantasy life.
It’s not just about what your child does if they are always online. It’s about what they’re not doing: climbing trees, collecting rocks, cooking, playing board games, reading.
We have worked to give our son a full life offline and it is rewarding. I am sure that my son has an even-tempered character, he is emotionally available and physically active due to his very limited screen time. I love the comparative innocence of him; It is a truism that children who are not allowed to be children never grow up.
Three-quarters of 10- to 12-year-olds have a social media account on one of the big sites
I’m not saying that smartphones make all children sick; that would be ridiculous. But I do believe that those with an underlying predisposition are at higher risk of getting sick if they have it.
Of course, some of the anti-phone talk has a tinge of moral panic: that this is the only thing wrong with our kids, and that if we fix this, we fix them. That’s silly; Children face challenges in every generation. But until we’ve learned to navigate the new technology, and until the tech companies clean up their acts (the Online Safety Bill is a start), I find it safer to keep my son away from it. He would rather drop a viper in his hands.
I also fear that families who spend their lives talking on the phone don’t really know each other.
One Mother’s Day I saw a family of four in a restaurant. Each one of them was talking on the phone. In that horrible modern picture, there seemed to be little room for intimacy or love.
I thought again of the boy in the stroller at the bus stop, searching for a mother online.
