The Irish town of Greystones wants to overcome peer pressure and anxiety among children.
Therefore, the city’s parents are now introducing a smartphone ban for everyone under the age of 13, reports The Guardian.
– The longer we can preserve their childhood, the better, says Laura Bourne, the parent of young children.
Parents from eight primary schools in the Irish city have joined forces to collectively tell their children they can’t have a smartphone – until they start secondary school.
– If everyone does it at the same time, no one will feel left out. And that makes it so much easier as a parent to say no, says Laura Bourne, a parent of young children.
It is the concern that the children suffer from anxiety and peer pressure combined with the uncertainty surrounding them being exposed to adult content that is the basis for the initiative. The Guardian describes the whole thing as a rare example of a whole city agreeing on something.
Receives approval from the Minister of Health
The ban, which is up to each parent to implement, involves keeping smartphones from children both at home and at school until they turn 13.
– Childhood just gets shorter and shorter. We can’t just sit and watch when it happens, says principal Rachel Harper, who is one of the initiators behind the ban, to The Guardian.
The Greystones initiative has reached Ireland’s Health Minister Stephen Donnelly who is recommending the ban as a nationwide policy.
“Ireland can and should be a world leader in ensuring that children and young people are not harmed by their interactions with the digital world. We need to make it easier for parents to limit the content their children are exposed to,” he wrote in Irish Times earlier this week.