At a time when the mobile is in the eye of the hurricane due to the effects that its (mis)use has from childhood, an entire town in Ireland, Greystones, has just adopted a decision that will make it much easier for parents to use it. deny their young children, no matter how much the creatures kick with the helpless argument that "everyone has it!".
The family associations of the eight primary schools in the district have signed a code for the non-use of smartphones until secondary school. In other words, no mobile until the age of 12. The decision thus exceeds any eventual regulation by the Irish government and also, and this is not unimportant, relieves families of the responsibility –all theirs– for the purchase of one of these devices at an early age. On the other hand, it also prevents the teachers of the cloisters from having to take a position before the pedagogical dilemma of mobile yes or mobile no in the classroom.
Any analysis or attempt to debate this issue, so addressed in recent times as apparently irresolvable, must take into account that in many homes the smartphone is given to the child from their earliest childhood to calm them down, but also so that their exhausted parents can comply with his long work obligations. Here, in this growing trend, is where experts tend to mediate, and there is also a division of opinion among them.
The problem is not the technology but the use made of it. The discussion festers, however, when it comes to younger children: At what age should we give them their first mobile? The ideal age is 16 years old, something that is clearly impractical, so that expert opinions vary. From the more “digital puritans” educators who advocate no mobile phones before the age of 12 given the potential damage to mental health and attention span that abuse of these devices can cause. Even other pedagogues, let's say, more open to giving and facilitating the motive, who maintain that it depends on the child, their family circumstances and their socio-emotional development.
What they do have an impact on and everyone agrees on is two issues. One, the influence exerted on children by seeing how the adults around them use their mobile phones. And two, the necessary existence of accompaniment by families and educators when the little ones have their mobile phones in hand. In Spain, for example, the use of mobile phones spreads rapidly from the age of 10. At that age, two out of every ten minors have a mobile phone; at 12 there are already two out of three; at 13, nine out of ten; and at 15 practically all (96%), according to a 2022 report from the National Observatory of Technology and Society.
The news about the social pact of Greystones (a town with about 18,000 inhabitants) was announced this Saturday by 'The Guardian' without specifying whether in the schools adhering to the new code there were teachers in favor of introducing this technology in class as a school tool. It so happens that this week the Swedish government announced that it would stop the digital plan in exchange for promoting the use of textbooks, understanding that the excess of screens could be among the causes of a slight drop in academic performance.
The no-mobile code through high school has been assumed by the Greystones signers on a voluntary basis. In the county town of Wicklow they took the lead last month amid concerns about how smartphones could be fueling anxiety and exposing children to adult content. The step taken by the people of Greystones led the Irish Health Minister, Stephen Donnelly, to recommend it as a national policy.
In principle, the code imposes that no one will give a mobile phone to a child before he turns 12, neither at home nor at school. "Childhood is getting shorter and shorter," the promoter of the idea, the headmistress of Saint Patrick's School, Rachel Harper, told 'The Guardian'. In her opinion, the children had begun to ask for the mobile as early as the age of nine in the awakening of interest in social networks. And if that kid didn't have it, then a friend did: “A citywide policy – says Harper – reduces the possibility of a child having a partner with a smartphone... And parents can present the code as a school rule : they love it, now they can blame the schools."
