03 Oct 2024
Hundreds of parents across the district have signed a pledge promising not to buy their children a smartphone until they are in Year 9, as the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign moves into a new phase.
Top of the list for the district, and second in the whole of Herts, is the combined 180 parents from Crabtree Infant and Junior Schools who have made the commitment.
The “parents pact” is the latest initiative from Herts SFC, which gained momentum after the St Albans Times broke the story that 20 out of 24 primary headteachers in the city wanted to see smartphones restricted until pupils were 14.
The story was swiftly picked up by the national media, and prompted the creation of numerous WhatsApp groups representing schools across the district and beyond, all striving to reset expectations and remove social peer pressure surrounding young people and smartphones.
One of these was Crabtree, set up by James and Victoria Edgar, and now coordinated by them with the invaluable support of five other parents.
The culture at Crabtree had been that all children expected a smartphone for their 11th birthday, but through their positivity and commitment attitudes have already shifted.
James explained: “For Victoria and me the campaign is about restoring choice. We have three daughters and the eldest is only six. But we became aware that the norm for children getting smartphones had become Year 6 and that even those who wanted to delay felt they had to get their kid one or risk them being socially isolated. We felt that we would not have a choice when our kids got to Year 6.
The national Smartphone Free Childhood campaign has found a way to tackle this coordination problem. As they say: ‘knowing exactly how many kids in your child’s school – right down to their year group – are committed to delaying makes it feel possible to do the same’.”
In a bid to coordinate mums and dads’ views on the subject as neutrally as possible, they engaged the help of a parent who was a clinical psychologist to create a survey, which showed that a pact to delay could have a real impact.
The survey revealed that 92 per cent of Crabtree parents had concerns about their children having a smartphone, yet the majority of parents planned to give their sons and daughters a smartphone before they were 14, with only 24 per cent definitely planning to wait until at least that age.
The two main drivers in giving children smartphones were peer pressure – i.e. not wanting their children to feel isolated- and for safety reasons, but 61 per cent of parents said that other parents delaying giving their children a smartphone would definitely impact their decision, with 77 per cent saying it would definitely or possibly impact their decision.
James added: “Our key message is that we want to make sure that all Harpenden parents of younger kids know that if they would like to delay beyond Year 6 they are not alone. They can make their own choices free of the concern that their child might be the only one without a smartphone.
“If you agree with the campaign, please come and show your support by signing the anonymous pact so that we really can shift the social norm and allow everyone to make their own free choices for their kids again.”
His wife Victoria admits to being a reluctant convert to the campaign, especially as their eldest was only six years old.
But she explained: “It was the research on the neurobiological effects of interactive feedback loops on the dopamine pathways in developing adolescent brains that drew me in – the kind of constant little dopamine hits provided by social media, mobile games etc.
“I’m a social worker by training and a large portion of my career has been working with teens and pre-teens in crisis.
“I have comforted girls and boys after they have self-harmed. I have held pre-teen boys grieving for their avatar that they have had to let go of because their online persona became more important to them than their real-world life.
“I now work with families torn apart by criminal and sexual exploitation, through gangs controlling 13 year olds through their phones, breaking down any safeguards the families use to stop them.
“I have counselled girls and boys who have faced censure, blackmail, emotional abuse and sexual harassment sometimes because they made one mistake that was captured on camera, and often those targeting them just spread lies and images that they had nothing to do with but still wreaked damage. All of this is made far worse by aggressive algorithms on social media, teen group WhatsApp chats and endless hours of screen time that can lead to weird, frightening places on the internet.
“The piece I had not understood until the campaign started was the ways that children’s brains can’t hope to compete with the addictive nature of smartphones.
“You don’t need to live the extremes that I see in my working life. Anxiety, depression and eating disorders in children and teens is at epidemic levels.
“Hertfordshire is above the national average of adolescent mental health problems and we’ve heard that St Albans and Harpenden are hotspots.
“We also understand that the local services are overwhelmed.
“Families who are dealing with these issues know that the help on offer is not sufficient to meet demand. I know how hard living with children in emotional crisis can be and the awful, whispered truth is that families too often have to watch their children get really unwell before they are eligible for services.
“You don’t even have to just look at teen populations, the screen time addiction in children is exhausting. The daily battles over screens and the anger and despair when the children have to turn them off. We all know tablets and smartphones are addictive. I have heard from far too many friends about their beautiful children becoming aggressive in a desperate attempt to regain control of a screen.
“I will go to the ends of the Earth to protect our daughters and if delaying giving them smartphones and access to social media can reduce their risk of mental and emotional harm then that is an easy decision. If along the way we can drive down the numbers of teens struggling in St Albans and Harpenden then surely that is a campaign worth backing.”
The ultimate aim of the campaign is to become a catalyst for policy and social change, but as James says, it doesn’t matter what they achieve in primary schools, they need a critical mass in Year 7 to make the tech companies sit up and take action.
“They are not protecting kids properly now, so this expression of parental power is a way to make them sit up and take notice,” he added.
Find out more about signing the parents’ pact at https://parentpact.smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/
