More than 4,000 parents have joined a group committed to barring young children from having smartphones, as concerns grow about online safety and the impact of social media on mental health.
The WhatsApp group Smartphone Free Childhood was created by the former school friends Clare Fernyhough and Daisy Greenwell in response to their fears around children’s smartphone use and the “norm” of giving children smart devices when they go to secondary school.
“I’ve got a seven- and nine-year-old. Daisy’s got kids of a similar age and we were both feeling really horrified and worried and just didn’t want them to have smartphones at 11, which seems to be the norm now.”
Fernyhough and Greenwell hoped the movement would embolden parents to delay giving their children smartphones until at least 14, with no social media access until 16.
But what they expected to be a small group of friends who help “empower each other” has turned into a nationwide campaign after the group reached the 1,000-person capacity within 24 hours of Greenwell uploading an Instagram post to promote it.
Social media absolutely needs regulating though. I think it should be subject to the same regulation as gambling
These black and white solutions are not tenable. My eldest got a phone when they moved up to secondary school. It's a useful tool for keeping in touch with their friends especially when most people don't have landlines any more. Their generation is growing up as digital natives and I don't think holding them back from phones will help them in the long run.
We do limit what apps can be installed though. They certainly want TikTok but so far we've said no and YouTube is only available on the family TV. So far they have not expressed any interest in getting access to social media although I do have to occasionally unblock Facebook because some of the homework links to videos on the site.
I know I'm probably in the minority in having enough digital skills to erect some barriers against the worst of the internet but I'm very much aware they will set it eventually. My hope is we've done enough to prepare them for that by the time the training wheels come off.
This apparently "spontaneous" group of "ordinary mothers" looks surprisingly media-trained. I'd be interested in knowing more about the founders. When the "keep our schools open during covid" group were examined they turned out to be a puppet of a right-wing thinktank.
Given the surname of one of them, we are, presumably, distant cousins. So I'll ask if we ever cross paths.
However, if it is astroturfing, I can't quite see the agenda being promoted here or, strictly speaking, who'd gain from this unless it's part of the lobbying done for the porn ID bill (as a lobbyist friend of mine claims to have been involved, there was cash being thrown around to make that happen).
You could be right. I listened to a Tory minister on the radio today talking about ending anonymity on the internet and - more interestingly - about silo-ing parts of the internet so that certain groups, such as children, could only access certain "versions" of the internet. I wonder whether that's the longer-term agenda.
Things the Tories love doing:
- Giving money and favours to their rich chums
- Quelling descent, often about the above
You could see walling off parts of the Internet and cracking down on end-to-end encryption as being pieces in the same jigsaw. Once they have all the technology in place it would just need a concocted threat (Just Stop Oil organising their "terrorist outrages" online) for them to push it a bit further. Until, by increments, our Internet looks awfully like Chinas.
I grew up with very limited access to the Internet or even TV and I am so thankful my parents made that decision
I grew up with even less access. At school we used paper and ticker-tape to program computers. And there was no tv (which was black and white anyway) during the day. Those were the days. Boring as fuck!
