BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Try saying “no” when a child asks for a smartphone. What comes next, parents everywhere can attest, starts with some variation of, “Everyone has one. Why can’t I do that?”
But what if no pre-teen has one – and what if having a smartphone was weird? That’s the endgame for a growing number of parents across Europe who are concerned about evidence that smartphone use among young children is endangering their safety and mental health – and who share the belief that there is strength in numbers.
From Spain to Britain and Ireland, parents are flooding WhatsApp and Telegram groups with plans to not only keep smartphones out of schools, but also to join arms and refuse to allow young children to buy devices before – or even into – their teenage years.
After being inspired by a conversation in a Barcelona park with other mothers, Elisabet García Permanyer started a chat group last fall to share information about the dangers of Internet access for children with families at her children’s school.
The group, called ‘Adolescence Without Cell Phones’, quickly expanded to other schools and then to the entire country and now has more than 10,000 members. The most concerned parents have formed activist pairs in schools across Spain, urging fellow parents to agree not to give their children smartphones until they are 16. After organizing online, they facilitate real-world conversations between concerned parents to further their crusade.
“When I started this, I hoped I would find four other families who felt the same way I did, but it took off and just kept growing and growing and growing,” says García Permanyer. “My goal was to try to join forces with other parents so that we could push back the time when smartphones arrive. I said, ‘I’m going to try to make sure my kids aren’t the only ones who don’t have one.'”
A push in the right direction, with the help of the Spanish government
It’s not just parents.
Police and public health experts sounded the alarm over a spike in the number of violent and pornographic videos witnessed by children via handheld devices. The Spanish government took note of the momentum and completely banned smartphones from primary schools in January. Now they can only be turned on in high school, which starts at age 12, if a teacher deems it necessary for an educational activity.
“If we adults are addicted to smartphones, how can we give one to a 12-year-old who can’t use it?” asks García Permanyer. “We missed this. If the internet were a safe place for children, that would be fine. But that is not it.”
The movement in Britain gained steam this year after the mother of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey, who was murdered by two teenagers last year, began demanding that children under 16 no longer have access to social media on smartphones.
“It feels like we all know that buying smartphones is a bad decision for our children, but the social norm hasn’t caught up yet,” wrote Daisy Greenwell, a mother from Suffolk, England, of three children under 10. . her Instagram earlier this year. “What if we could change the social norm so that in our school, our city, our country, it would be an odd choice to give your child a smartphone at the age of 11? What if we could wait until they are 14 or 16?
She and a friend, Clare Reynolds, set up a WhatsApp group called Parents United for a Smartphone-Free Childhood, with three people on it. She posted an invitation on her Instagram page. Within four days, 2,000 people had joined the group, forcing Greenwell and Reynolds to split up dozens of groups per location. Three weeks after the original post, there was a chat group for every British province, one of the organizers said on WhatsApp.
It’s an uphill climb
Parents pushing to ban smartphones from young children still have a long way to go to change what is considered “normal.”
By the time they are 12, most children have a smartphone, according to statistics from all three countries. If you look a little closer, the figures become even clearer: in Spain, a quarter of children have a mobile phone at the age of 10, and almost half at the age of 11. At the age of 12, this share rises to 75%. British media regulator Ofcom said 55% of children in Britain between the ages of 8 and 11 owned a smartphone, with this figure rising to 97% at age 12.
Ofcom added another statistic to their report last year: one in five toddlers aged 3 or 4 have a smartphone.
Parents and schools who have managed to shift the paradigm in their communities told The Associated Press that change became possible the moment they understood they were not alone. What started as a tool to keep in touch with friends has turned into something more worrisome to keep away from children – similar, these parents argue, to things like cigarettes and alcohol.
In Greystones, Ireland, that moment came after all eight primary school principals in the city signed and posted a letter last May discouraging parents from buying smartphones for their students. The parents then voluntarily signed written pledges themselves, promising not to give their children the devices.
“The discussion disappeared almost overnight,” said Christina Capatina, 38, a Greystones parent of two preteen daughters who signed the pledge and says there are almost no smartphones in schools this school year. “Now when (kids) even ask, you tell them, we’re just following the rules. That’s how we live.”
For Barcelona’s Mònica Marquès, no signed promise was needed to achieve the same result. She surveyed the parents of her daughters’ class two years ago and was surprised to see that “99% of them were as scared or more scared than I was.”
She shared the results of her questionnaire and says that this year, when her daughter started high school, not a single student in her class had a smartphone.
And as for that other excuse that kids supposedly need a smartphone so parents can keep an eye on them, Marquès says an old-fashioned cell phone without internet access, like her daughter’s, is a perfect substitute.
Increasing control
There has been a consensus for years among institutions, governments, parents and others that smartphone use by children is associated with bullying, suicidal ideation, anxiety and loss of concentration necessary for learning. China took steps last year to restrict children’s use of smartphones, while France imposed a ban on smartphones in schools for children aged six to 15.
The push to control smartphones in Spain comes amid a wave of infamous cases in which children view pornography online, share videos of sexual violence or even participate in creating “deep fake” pornographic images of female classmates using generative artificial intelligence tools. The Spanish government says that 25% of children aged 12 and under and 50% of children aged 15 and under have already been exposed to online pornography. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Spain is facing an “authentic epidemic” of pornography targeting minors.
Threats include adults taking advantage of minors they meet online, such as the recent arrest of two “influencers” in Madrid for allegedly sexually abusing underage girls who followed them on TikTok.
The dangers have led to school bans on smartphones and online safety laws. But they are not about what children do outside office hours.
“What I try to emphasize to other principals is the importance of connecting with the school next door,” says Rachel Harper, principal of St. Patrick’s National School, one of eight in Greystones that encourages parents to forego smartphones for their children. “That way there is a little more power, because all the parents in the area are talking about it.”
Parents’ concerns are diverse. Some fear the day when their young children ask for a phone like their friends. Others have young teens with phones and regret following the herd into what they see as a naive phase when screens were just a way for kids to have fun and chat with their friends. Parents say they’ve emerged from a state of blissful ignorance about the Internet.
The COVID-19 pandemic’s home isolation provided a firsthand glimpse of their children staring at screens and becoming clever at hiding what they saw there — and what found them.
“The screens were seen as an escape valve that kept adults working and children occupied, whatever that meant,” says Macu Cristófol, who founded a group of concerned parents in Malaga, southern Spain, after hearing about the exuberant parents’ group in Barcelona . “Then I thought: where are we going? We have become hostages of screens.”
Capatina says she saw her 11-year-old daughter change the day she came home from a playground and said a girl there had recorded video of the scene on a smartphone.
“Panic, panic, panic,” Capatina remembers her daughter’s reaction. “Nothing major actually happened,” says Capatina, “but I saw pressure and anxiety building where they hadn’t before. And I thought: that’s not healthy. Kids shouldn’t have to worry about things like that.”
But if the kids can’t have smartphones, will parents cut back on their own online time? That is difficult, several parents say, because they manage families and work online. Capatina, an interior designer, says she shows her children what she’s been doing online — work, for example, or planning — “to keep myself accountable.”
Laura Borne, a Greystones mother of children aged 5 and 6 who have never known smartphones, says she is aware of the need to model online behavior – and will probably have to cut back.
“I do my best,” she says. But just like with the children she parents, the pressure is there. And they don’t go away.
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Kellman reported from London.