When Steve Jobs climbed to a podium in San Francisco in 2007 to unveil the first iPhone, he promised a revolution. Inevitably, the crowd at the Macworld Conference and Expo went wild when he merged an iPod, a phone, and an “Internet communicator.” But he was as good as his word; It didn’t take long for the gadgets to end up in the pockets of schoolchildren around the world. Kids in Britain who could afford the latest technology were soon showing off the magic phone and crazy apps like ‘iBeer’ – which turned your phone into a virtual pint – or playing music for their peers on Pocket Guitar.
Soon after, most kids with the pocket money, or willing parents, had put aside their ‘dumb’ flip phones or ‘bricks’ and picked up a smartphone – with the darkest corners of the internet just a few taps away, and widespread use of social media. media apps such as Facebook and Instagram are soon to follow. According to a 2022 Ofcom report, 91 percent of children now own a smartphone by the age of 11, while 41 percent have one by the time they are nine.
But while parents have been grumbling for years that their children may be spending a little too much time in front of a screen, the battle against phones has gained momentum in recent months and has become a true crusade against the devices. It comes amid growing fears about the impact of phones on young people’s health, development and education.
This week it emerged that the government is considering banning the sale of phones to children under 16. It reflects previous efforts to curb potentially harmful activities among young people. In 1906 a House of Lords committee felt that smoking among young people should be brought before the Board of Education and suggested that “teachers should be invited to point out from time to time the ill effects of this habit on stunting growth and causing disease.” In 1908, the sale of cigarettes to young people under the age of 16 was banned.
This restriction came 300 years after King James I noted in his 1604 treatise “Counterblaste to Tobacco” that smoking was “injurious to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in its black fetid vapor, which most resembled the terrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.” So today, at the very least, lawmakers are acting with greater haste.
The policy now under active consideration is part of a series of measures to enable parents to take back control of their children’s use of technology, although Westminster sources insist “nothing has been decided yet”.
‘Virality and addiction’
But the reports have been taken up by politicians and parents who want to curb smartphone use. Miriam Cates, the Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, said a ban should be “music to the ears of Conservatives” and said “regulation is obviously necessary to protect children”.
Molly Kingsley, founder of children’s campaign group UsForThem, said on
While politicians hesitated for years to pass the Online Safety Act, which was passed into law in October, the rules won’t fully come into effect until 2025. The current extensive regulations have been criticized by tech giants and security activists alike, and calls for urgent action on smartphones have quickly moved up the political agenda. The government’s move to explore further curbs on tech giants is said to have been driven by Number 10.
In the US, psychologist Prof Jonathan Haidt – who previously campaigned against Cancel Culture – has led calls for a rethink of the way children use smartphones. Haidt has argued that young people’s mental health has taken a nosedive since the early 2010s. That decrease in happiness, he wrote The Atlantic Oceancoincided with “the years when adolescents in wealthy countries traded their flip phones for smartphones and moved much of their social lives online – especially to social media platforms designed for virality and addiction.”
His statements have stimulated a burgeoning anti-phone movement. Provocative advertisements for his new book, The fearful generationfunction 1984style messages such as “Safety is growth. Supervision is love.”
Campaigners are increasingly comparing the rise of Big Tech to Big Tobacco. But while it has taken decades to reduce the number of people smoking – through advertising blackouts, plain packaging and bans on pubs and restaurants – activists are trying to turn the tide on phones much faster.
In The Atlantic OceanHaidt adds that comparisons between the tobacco industry and social media are “not fair to the tobacco industry” – teens can choose not to smoke, but have almost no choice but to use smartphones and social media. He has called for an effort to “roll back phone-based youth” by 2025.
Parents in the US have increasingly taken up arms against Big Tech. In the US, hundreds of schools and thousands of parents have sued social media companies, claiming their defective products have harmed children.
These fears are increasingly popular in Britain. After the murder of her daughter Brianna Ghey, Esther Ghey has called for age limits on smartphones and stricter rules for social media.
On WhatsApp, a parents’ group called Smartphone Free Childhood has attracted 60,000 members and grown into a grassroots effort to give children simple “brick” phones instead of a touchscreen device.
Daisy Greenwell, co-founder of the group, said: “This all started from a deep sense of unease that children in my eight-year-old’s class were starting to get smartphones. I knew I didn’t want to give her one, but everyone said you had to do that because everyone else was doing it.”
Arabella Skinner, director of the Safescreens Campaign, a parent-run group calling for restrictions on children’s phone use, said: “There should be prominent tobacco-style health warnings on devices, linked to a public health campaign about excessive screen time and its addictive nature of devices – both for children and for use by adults around children.”
A ban on sales to children would be another attempt to curb its use, although other countries have tried similar restrictions.
China has been the most aggressive in tackling smartphone use among teens. The communist state has proposed banning children under the age of eight from using their smartphones for more than 40 minutes a day. Under 16s would have a one-hour limit and 16 and 17-year-olds would have a two-hour limit. China already bans most online games from being played at night with a 10pm curfew.
Several countries have banned phones in classrooms – or even schools. New Zealand only allows phones during breaks, while in France under-15s cannot use their phones on school grounds. This year, the Netherlands followed suit with a ban on phones, tablets and smartwatches in classrooms. In Ireland, some parents have united in support of an informal ban on children buying phones before they start secondary school.
In March, the UK government issued guidance to headteachers saying they should ban phones in classrooms and during breaks.
For a sales block to work, Arabella Skinner argues that the ban must “at least” include a block on “sales, supply and marketing of unlimited phones and applications” up to the age of 16.
‘This punishes children for the failures of Big Tech’
But there are questions about whether a ban would be effective, or even necessary. A major study from the Oxford Internet Institute, published in November, found there was “no evidence” that screen time was harmful to children’s development. Using MRI scans, the scientists examined 12,000 children aged nine to twelve, comparing their screen use with brain development and mental health.
Meanwhile, in a review in Nature from Haidt’s new book, psychologist Candice Odgers writes: “Age-based restrictions and bans on mobile devices are unlikely to be effective in practice – or worse, they could backfire given what we know about adolescent behavior.”
Even some internet safety advocates are cautious about requiring children not to have smartphones. Andy Burrows, spokesperson for the Molly Rose Foundation, the charity set up in memory of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who was found dead in her bedroom in 2017 after months of surfing through dark images and videos on social media, is skeptical about the proposals, calling them “evil, reactionary” and wondering whether they are likely to be this side of the general election.
There are also simple practical questions. Currently, children cannot legally sign a phone contract if they are under 18, and mobile networks are not allowed to sell them one.
“This feels like it would, at best, close a technical gap,” Burrows says. “Ultimately we believe this is a distraction from where the real focus should be, which is strengthening the regulatory regime and ensuring that when children go online, they can do so in a safe way.” He said it may be an “easy solution to raise the drawbridge,” but this “quite frankly punishes children for Big Tech’s failures.”
Greenwell of Smartphone Free Childhood, however, remains adamant. She says: “It is now clear that parents across Britain are demanding change.”
It seems the race to make smartphones illegal has only just begun.