It’s time to ‘divorce’ your children from their phones

Zoe Beaty, The Independent

It’s a discussion that has become a weekly occurrence in Soban Bashir’s home: a “game” that many parents will be familiar with — one of stubbornly sticking to your guns, played on both sides. The game goes like this: Bashir’s son, who is currently in year 7, asks if he can have a phone, Bashir says no. He asks if he can have it to just join WhatsApp, Bashir says no. “And then, the next week, it starts all over again,” he says.

It’s a dilemma that has become a defining part of modern parenting. Since smartphones became an essential part of our daily lives, owning one is now a rite of passage of sorts — for kids, it means more freedom, more kudos, one step closer to the tantalising allure of adulthood. For parents, it’s complicated.

According to Ofcom, an estimated 91 per cent of 11-year-olds in the UK now own a smartphone. In the US, 42 per cent of children have one by the age of 10. A European survey by the London School of Economics, EU Kids Online, found in 2022 that the majority of children in 19 European countries report using their smartphones daily or “almost all of the time”.

“This marks a substantial increase in both the proportion of smartphone-using children, as well as the amount of their internet use compared with the EU Kids Online 2010 survey,” they noted in the report.

It’s cause for concern. Cyberbullying, access to harmful content — 90 per cent of girls and 50 per cent of boys of secondary school age say they’re sent explicit content that they didn’t want to see, according to grassroots movement Smartphone Free Childhood.

The threat of grooming is constantly there (one primary school teacher says almost every one of the children in his class, boys and girls, has been approached by a stranger online at some point), and basic issues like academic distraction are just some of the dangers kids now face online.

Both academically and anecdotally, the effects of social media on children’s mental wellbeing are now emerging — Bashir’s wife, a GP, is often worried by the number of teenagers presenting in her office with acute anxiety. Some countries are taking note, and introducing pioneering — and controversial — measures to help protect young people from the dangers of the internet. Earlier this week, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese announced that “world-leading” legislation would be introduced this month, to be enacted in the country late next year.

The law will institute an age limit of 16 years for children to start using social media — and platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and X/Twitter will all be held responsible for ensuring their compliance. “Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Albanese said during his announcement. In the UK, Sir Keir Starmer has been urged to back a similar ban. The Safer Phones Bill, introduced to parliament last month, would raise the age of “internet adulthood” from 13 to 16 and legally ban phones from classrooms, among other recommendations. Starmer responded that he was against “simply banning” children’s phones. Bashir, who has three sons aged 8, 11 and 16, was disappointed with the response. Initially, he didn’t think twice about giving his eldest son an iPhone when he started secondary school — really, it’s now par for course, and the phone was programmed to only send texts and make phone calls.

“But then, social media apps started to creep in,” says Bashir, 44, from Rochdale. “He asked for WhatsApp first, then, when he reached year 10, for Snapchat, too. We set up the parental controls but, of course, Snapchat has features like disappearing messages. We started doing spot checks on the phone and, soon after, we found some inappropriate messages on there — I won’t say exactly what. But it just wasn’t appropriate. I started to realise we shouldn’t have given him the phone in the first place.” His son’s phone was taken away for six months — and now, it’s his 11-year-old’s turn to plead for one. But, despite the battle, Bashir is “firmly resolved” to stick with it.

He joined the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign, set up by Daisy Greenwell and Joe Ryrie in February this year, in May. The campaign began accidentally after an Instagram posted by Greenwell — then a WhatsApp group — went viral. Over the course of the year, more than 150,000 parents have joined forces to “change the culture around kids and smartphones”, they say. Of course, some parents disagree with the principle. There’s a cool-headed argument that allowing young people phones as they begin to move around the world independently is actually for their own safety.

They also allow kids access to communities they might not otherwise be able to feel part of, at a sensitive time of development. Also, gaming is said to be the real problem when it comes to grooming and phones, like it or not, are a staple part of all of our lives — wouldn’t digital literacy be a better approach?

“It’s not just about accessing information, she says, but the right information and the right supportive environment,” Ruffell said. In an online world increasingly overwhelmed by misinformation, it makes some sense. Recently, her son’s headteacher explained that the weight of social media and exposure to 24/7 news — quite terrifying news, at that — was making kids more and more stressed.