By Lesley Walsh
STRANGFORD MP Jim Shannon has thrown his weight behind the campaign to reduce smartphone use in schools during class time hours.
Mr Shannon hosted an event last week for local school principals and boards of governors at which Cathy Mannus, a paediatric occupational therapist and the regional co-leader of Smartphone Free Childhood NI, spoke of the difficulty for parents of trying to delay giving their children a smartphone and called for more government regulation.
“We understand smartphone and social media use for our children and young people is a huge issue for our society,” she said. “Whilst we as parents are coming together to try to collectively delay the age at which we give our children smartphones, we cannot do this alone.
“More government regulation is required but in the meantime parents and schools can work together,” she maintained, to achieve ‘smartphone free, bell-to-bell policies’.
She added her hopes that all primary schools will signpost parents to the ‘Parent Pact’ – which supports people trying to delay giving their youngsters a smartphone until at least the age of 14. Glenlola Collegiate principal, Eric
Thompson addressed guests, speaking of the school’s participation in a Department of Education pilot scheme banning phone use during school hours.
Speakers representing Smartphone Free Childhood Northern Ireland, police and other schools outlined the growing evidence of the harms of smartphones and social media use for young people and the steps that are being taken to address these challenges.
They referred to Ofcom data collated last year which revealed that one third of six to seven year olds in the UK have their own smartphones, rising to 90% by age 12.
Smartphone Free Childhood Northern Ireland believes that parents feel they’ve been put in an impossible position – they either give their child a smartphone or risk alienating their child from their peers at a crucial stage of their development.
The group therefore encourages parents to come together to form voluntary pacts to delay giving smartphones to children until at least age 14 – the Parent Pact.
It also advocates a policy of no social media access until children reach 16, recently introduced in Australia.
To date parents of some 4,000 children at around 440 schools in Northern Ireland, many of whom are in the Strangford and North Down area, have signed the pact.
Last month, the Department of Education NI wrote to all principals in Northern Ireland to make them aware of the Parent Pact, with the national charity, Smartphone Free Childhood also calling for mobile phones to be restricted throughout the school day – even at lunchtime and recreational periods.
Though most schools operate policies to restrict smartphone use during school times, secondary school parents from the Smartphone Free Childhood movement across Northern Ireland report that it is still common for children to be asked to use a smartphone in class.
Often this falls under a ‘supervised use’ policy, in which children use them for research, on apps like Google
Classroom, to play quizzes or to monitor updates for extra curricular activities such as sports team schedules.
To find out more about Smartphone Free Childhood, or sign the Parent Pact, visit www.smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk.
