Ireland: City bans smartphones for children under 13

Parents in the Irish town of Greystones were tired of seeing their children glued to their smartphones. Parents' associations at eight primary schools in County Wicklow (eastern Ireland) last month adopted a "smartphone-free code" to reduce young people's anxiety and screen exposure, the Guardian reports.

Concretely, this pact consists of removing the phone of children at home and at school until they enter high school. "Childhoods are getting shorter and shorter," Rachel Harper, the principal of St Patrick's School who led the initiative, told the British newspaper. From the age of nine they already ask to have a smartphone. It starts younger and younger." Implementing this city-wide policy "reduces the chances of a child having a classmate with a smartphone. Parents can present the code as a school rule," she continued.

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To obtain the signature of this pact, the schools circulated questionnaires to parents. This led to a meeting between all the Community actors who then established the content of the pact. Its application is not mandatory, parents remain free to provide a phone to their children. But Rachel Harper still noted a significant number of registrations and hopes that "this becomes the norm in the future," she told the Guardian.

Indeed, according to the report written by parents' associations, banning or restricting smartphones only at school is not enough to stem the harmful effects caused by screens and social networks, especially since Covid-19.

Soon to be expanded nationwide?

This local initiative caught the attention of Ireland's Minister of Health, Stephen Donnelly. He now wants to transform it into a national policy. "Ireland can, 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," he said in an op-ed published on 31 May in The Irish Times.

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More and more reports are being published on the harm caused to children and adolescents by certain types of phone use, such as the use of social networks and the Internet, which harm their mental health," he added.

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In France, a bill to establish a numerical majority was adopted at first reading on 23rd May last in the Senate, succeeding the National Assembly. Among other things, it aims to require platforms to set up a mandatory system of age verification or parental consent, in order to protect children from social networks and online hate.