At a time when the mobile phone is in the eye of the hurricane due to the effects that its (mis)use has since childhood, an entire village in Ireland, Greystones, has just adopted a decision that will do much more it’s easy for parents to deny it to their young children, no matter how much the creatures kick their feet with the seductive argument of “everyone has it!”.
The family associations of the eight primary schools in the district have signed a code not to use smartphones until secondary school. In other words, no mobile phones until the age of 12. The decision thus overcomes any eventual regulation by the Irish Government and in addition, and this is still important, it relieves families of the responsibility – all theirs – of purchasing one of these devices at an early age. On the other hand, it also prevents the teachers of the cloisters from having to take a position in the face of the pedagogical dilemma of mobile phones yes or no mobile phones in the classroom.
Any analysis or attempt to debate this matter, which has been so addressed in recent times as apparently unsolvable, must take into account that in many homes the smartphone is given to the child from the tenderest childhood to calm him down , but also so that their exhausted parents can fulfill their long work obligations. Here, in this growing trend, is where the experts usually mediate, and also among the specialists there is a division of opinion.
The problem is not the technology, but the use that is made of it. The discussion flares up especially when it comes to younger children: at what age should we give them their first mobile phone? The ideal age is 16, which is undoubtedly impractical today, so expert opinions vary. From the most “digital puritan” pedagogues who advocate for no mobile phones before the age of 12 given the potential damage to mental health and attention span that abuse of these devices can cause, to other pedagogues, let’s say children are more open to giving and facilitating the mobile phone, which they say depends on the child, their family circumstances and their socio-emotional development.
What all the experts do have an impact on and agree on are two matters. One, the influence exerted on children by seeing how the adults around them use their mobile phones. And two, the necessary existence of accompaniment by families and educators when the little ones have their mobile in hand.
In Spain, for example, mobile phone use is spreading rapidly from the age of 10. At this age, two out of ten minors have a smartphone; at 12 it is already two out of three; at 13, nine out of ten, and at 15, almost all (96%), according to a 2022 report from the National Observatory of Technology and Society.
The news about the social pact of Greystones (a population of about 18,000 inhabitants) was advanced this Saturday by The Guardian without specifying whether in the schools adhering to the new code there were teachers in favor of introducing this technology in the classroom as a school tool. It is the case that this same week the Government of Sweden announced that it would slow down the digital plan in exchange for promoting the use of textbooks because they understand that an excess of screens could be one of the causes of a slight drop in academic performance.
The no-mobiles-up-to-secondary code has been undertaken voluntarily by Greystones signatories. The Wicklow town took the initiative last month amid concerns that smartphones could be fueling anxiety and exposing children to adult content.
In principle, the code imposes that no one will give a mobile phone to a child before he turns 12, neither at home nor at school. “Childhood is getting shorter and shorter,” said the promoter of the idea, the director of Saint Patrick’s school, Rachel Harper, to The Guardian. In his opinion, children had already started to ask for mobile phones at the age of nine when interest in social networks is awakened. And if that child didn’t have it, then a friend did: “A city-wide policy – says Harper – reduces the possibility of a child having a friend with a smartphone… And parents can present the code as a school rule : they love it, now they can blame the schoolâ€
