Parents in a town just 45 minutes outside of Dublin have banded together to enforce a ban on smartphones for children until they finish primary school.
“It’s just a significant result of the increasing anxiety, depression and everything that we’ve noticed … having mobile phones, especially among young children,” Justyna Flynn, a clinical psychologist and Greystones resident with three children in school, told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday. “The support the city has received has been incredible.”
Parents’ associations at eight schools across the town of Greystones in County Wicklow decided earlier this summer to restrict smartphone access for their children amid fears of increased anxiety and potential exposure to adult material, The Guardian reports.
The agreement, signed jointly by all groups in a rare show of unity among so many groups, will see children banned from phones at home, at school, and elsewhere until they reach middle and high school.
Schools have already banned or restricted the use of devices in their areas, but parents decided to take it a step further.
“I think kids’ access to the internet, or the internet having access to our kids — we don’t know what’s going on there,” Flynn explained, saying he hoped the restrictions would continue into middle and high school as well.
“The brain does not develop [for children] … their phone use is linked to anxiety, depression, obesity, sleep disorders and many other health problems,” he added.
Parents in a Dublin suburb have banded together to enforce a ban on smartphones for children until they finish primary school.Getty Images/iStockphoto
A report released earlier this year from the United Nations found that smartphones “distract students from learning and increase their privacy risks at the same time,” the BBC reported.
Additionally, the report found that students performed better academically when smartphones were removed from school.
Smartphones provide “distraction, distraction, bullying, and abuse and can be detrimental to learning,” according to the British Department of Education, which suggests that teachers “consider restricting or banning cell phones to reduce this risk.”
“It’s just a significant result of the increased anxiety, depression and everything else that we’ve noticed … having cell phones, especially among young children,” Justyna Flynn said. FOX
Manos Antoninis, author of the Global Education Monitor 2023 report, asserts that “only technologies that support learning have a place in schools.”
He suggests that parents don’t shield their children “completely” from technology, but that discussions about the types of technology in the learning environment need to happen.
Irish Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, who lives near Greystones, supports the policy and has called for implementation across the country.
In an op-ed published in The Irish Times, Donnelly argued that the country must “look at some form of this approach nationally in terms of looking after young people’s mental health.”
The report found that students performed better academically once smartphones were removed from school. NurPhoto via Getty Images
He cited discussions with students, teachers, computer scientists and mental health experts in support of the policy.
Donnelly claims that the conversation made him aware of “some common themes”, such as the “damaging” content that children and teenagers can access from their smartphones, such as pornography and “extreme content”, but also the severe psychological concerns derived from content related to eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and suicidal ideation.
He notes that smartphones have a positive effect, too, by allowing students to coordinate activities and stay connected even when they go home for the day, but while he admits that “there are undoubtedly positives,” he sees it as the same as controlling broadcast and print media. .
“We regulate food and drink and drugs,” Donnelly wrote. “We have extensive child protection in many areas of our society. We are now starting to do that in the digital space.”
“The issues I raised here are being experienced all over the world,” he added. “Ireland can be, and must be, a world leader in ensuring that children and young people are not targeted and harmed by their interactions with the digital world.”
Greystones Municipal District did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment at the time of publication.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
