Smartphones are causing serious and sustained harm to children - this is now a well known fact. Whilst the Online Safety Act and other measures can help, they only scratch the surface. The only credible solution to end this dire situation for our children is to age restrict smartphones for those below a certain age, such as 16 or 17 years old. I have created a short video here on why I think this would be surprisingly easy:

Before explaining further - children would be allowed a mobile phone, with the ability to call, text, and play music. These phones would also contain a GPS tracker (actually an old technology that doesn’t require internet access) so that parents can locate them, if needed. This level of functionality is more than most of us adults could have dreamed of as children. What would be age restricted is any mobile device that has a cellular internet connection.

Not only would this dramatically reduce numerous harms being experienced by our children, some of which are referenced below, but it would save parents thousands of pounds! A basic brick phone such as the one outlined above can be purchased for around £50 (and it would last far longer). On top of this, a ban would actually be pretty easy to implement because the people buying the smartphones (parents) don’t actually want to buy them in the first place.

What is at stake?

The statistics on the harm being done to our children by smartphones are soul destroying. To give just one example, a 2020 study from UCL found that 1 in 4 children reported self harming by the age of 17 and 1 in 10 girls reported that they had harmed “with suicidal intent”. Statistics gathered by a variety of respected researchers and institutions, from Jonathan Haidt to the Children’s Commissioner,  paint a bleak picture of life as a child in the 21st Century. Not a day goes by without a story in the press that references the harm being done by smartphones to our children.

The significant (and growing) body of research proves what has been known for some time - that there is a causal relationship between the mental health of children and their use of smartphone functionality. To name but four - social media, extremist material, pornography and harmful content, such as suicide advice. These, it hardly needs stating, are not age appropriate, but attempts to prevent them being accessed by children with smartphones is futile (and exhausting).

Parents are trapped - they either socially isolate their child by not buying them a smartphone or enter into a contract with the devil; a device that is likely to harm their child and will certainly harm many of their peers and the rest of their generation. That the age of first being given a smartphone gets younger every year only makes matters worse. But it doesn’t have to be this way!

Action

We face what Jonathan Haidt has helpfully identified as ‘a collective action problem’. The only way to solve this dire situation is to work together and, in my view, we should do so by demanding that smartphones be banned for children. Children don’t need them! They need an internet enabled device at home (tablet and/or laptop) and a basic ‘brick’ mobile phone. As is increasingly the case, their school will also facilitate the use of an internet enabled device at school. Isn’t that enough screen time?

Any age restriction would be phased in over a time, to avoid children going ‘cold turkey’. So, for example, from the summer of 2026, smartphone ownership would be illegal for 10 year olds, then 11 years in 2027, and so on, until the desired minimum age is reached. I am a proponent of 17 years old but a debate on this can be had, and I want to get that debate started. Once fully enforced, only a very small proportion of children would find ways to break the law and have these devices. The spell would be broken and, much like the ban on smoking in public places, we will look back in amazement that this was ever allowed to happen in the first place.

I have worked as a teacher for over 20 years and have seen first hand the harm being done to young people by smartphones. As a father of two young children, I abhor the impending non-choice that awaits me in just a few short years. But with a simple piece of legislation, I can just tell my child “No smartphone because it’s illegal”. And so can every other parent; the issue would dissolve. We can turn this public health disaster around.

A smartphone based childhood is no childhood.

Please sign the petition. For more information, please read my articles on Substack, become part of the Delay Smartphones​ / Smartphone Free Childhood movements and visit Jonathan's website After Babel. 

If not now, when? If not you, who?