Skip to main content

Parents unite in smartphone ban for children

Children using a smartphone.
Max Fischer/Pexels
Promotional image for Tech For Change. Person standing on solar panel looking at sunset.
This story is part of Tech for Change: an ongoing series in which we shine a spotlight on positive uses of technology, and showcase how they're helping to make the world a better place.

Parents in a town in Ireland have come together in a bid to remove the temptations of smartphones from their children’s daily life, the Guardian reported.

Concerned about the adverse effect that social media might be having on their offspring, parents in Greystones — a community of around 18,000 located 14 miles south of Dublin — agreed to launch a town-wide no-smartphone rule that means their children will only be able to get a handset once they reach secondary school at around the age of 13.

Recommended Videos

The thinking is that banding together to impose such a sweeping rule will make it easier for parents to present it to their children.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

“If everyone does it across the board, you don’t feel like you’re the odd one out,” Laura Bourne, who has a young child, told the Guardian. “It makes it so much easier to say no. The longer we can preserve their innocence the better.”

Before the rule was imposed, schools in the area banned or limited the use of phones on their premises, but parents have decided to take it a step further with a much broader ban.

Rachel Harper, principal of the school that developed the plan, said that childhoods “are getting shorter and shorter,” adding that she’d heard about local children as young as nine asking for a smartphone. “It was creeping in younger and younger, we could see it happening,” Harper said.

Greystones’ smartphone ban is voluntary, so some parents could still allow their child to use a handset, but enough people signed up to convince organizers that it was a plan worth pursuing.

One 10-year-old girl in the town admitted to the Guardian that while she would like to have a smartphone for texting her friends, she wouldn’t want to become addicted to it. Her sister, two years younger, seemed to think the ban was a good idea, saying: “It’s fair if no one can have it.”

Ireland’s health minister, Stephen Donnelly, has even recommended the initiative as a nationwide policy, saying that it’s important to “make it easier for parents to limit the content their children are exposed to.”

While smartphones can bring plenty of benefits to children, the devices can, for some, lead to mental health problems involving issues like self-image, cyberbullying, and exposure to unsuitable content.

Whether the new rule in Greystones leads to a positive outcome for the younger members of its community remains to be seen.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
RCS messaging is now live in iOS 18.2 for Boost Mobile subscribers
RCS messaging on iOS 18.

This week, Apple released iOS 18.2. Though the update is mostly being advertised for its new Apple Intelligence features, it also includes another feature long promised for certain U.S. iPhone users.

With the iOS 18.2 update, Boost Mobile customers using iPhones can now use RCS (Rich Communication Services) as an alternative to SMS and MMS. A Reddit user (via Android Authority) was the first to discover the change. Apple teased RCS support last year before making an official announcement at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

Read more
How two apps are turning smartphones into navigation devices for the blind
Screenshot of map schematic for Wayfinding app.

The first time I witnessed the challenges of disability was when I started college in 2016. My hostel mates came from across Asia and Africa, pursuing different career paths and hobbies, each with their own cultural identity and lived experiences.

Back then, an entire wing of my hostel was dedicated to blind students and peers with limited vision. Running into them in the alleys, en route to the dining halls, or toward the college — and guiding them to their destination, hand in hand — quickly became a daily routine.

Read more
2024 was a huge rebound for smartphone sales, but not for the iPhone
Photo of the rear of the iPhone 16 Pro, Galaxy S24 Ultra, OnePlus 12 and Pixel 9 Pro

After two years of decline, smartphone sales are projected to rebound strongly in 2024. However, IDC (via Bloomberg) shows this growth does not extend to Apple, which is expected to see only modest year-over-year gains.

The market tracker forecasts that smartphone sales will grow by 6.2% this year, pushing total units sold worldwide to 1.24 billion. In contrast, Apple is anticipated to experience only a 0.4% increase in iPhone sales.

Read more