Just two months ago, Daisy Greenwell reached a point at which she had to decide: would she give her eight-year-old daughter a smartphone, or make her “the weird one” without a mobile? “I thought this Wild West internet problem would be sorted by the time she got to this age,” Greenwell says. “And suddenly I realised her classmates had smartphones. We don’t want to get her one and I didn’t know what to do about it.”
Greenwell is not alone. A London headteacher announced plans earlier this year to introduce a 12-hour school day in a bid to tackle pupils’ smartphone addiction. A poll this summer suggested the overwhelming majority of parents back a ban on smartphones for under-16s. And 83 per cent of people surveyed by Parentkind felt that smartphone use was harmful to children and young people. It’s an issue that Australia has just become a leader in, as the country’s government is set to introduce legislation to ban under 16s from social media, as announced today by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
