A 11-year-old boy plays with his father's phone outside school in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, June 17, 2024. From Spain to Ireland and the UK, groups are ballooning on chat groups like WhatsApp and agreeing to link arms and refuse to buy children younger than 12 smartphones. – Try saying “no” when a child asks for a smartphone. What comes after, parents everywhere can attest, begins with some variation of: “Everyone has one.
“When I started this, I just hoped I would find four other families who thought like me, but it took off and kept growing, growing and growing,” García Permanyer says. “My goal was to try to join forces with other parents so we could push back the point when smartphones arrive. I said, ‘I am going to try so that my kids are not the only ones who don't have one.
She and a friend, Clare Reynolds, set up a WhatsApp group called Parents United for a Smartphone-Free Childhood, with three people on it. She posted an invitation on her Instagram page. Within four days, 2,000 people had joined the group, requiring Greenwell and Reynolds to split off dozens of groups by locality. Three weeks after the original post, there was a chat group for every British county, one of the organizers said on WhatsApp.
In Greystones, Ireland, that moment came after all eight primary school principals in town signed and posted a letter last May that discouraged parents from buying their students smartphones. Then the parents themselves voluntarily signed written pledges, promising to refrain from letting their kids have the devices.
And as for that other excuse that kids supposedly need a smartphone so parents can keep tabs on them, Marquès says an old-school cell phone without Internet access like the one her daughter carries is a perfect substitute.limit children's use “What I try to emphasize to other principals is the importance of joining up with the school next door to you,” says Rachel Harper, principal of St. Patrick’s National School, one of the eight in Greystones to encourage parents to refrain from smartphones for their kids. “There’s a bit more strength that way, in that all the parents in the area are talking about it.”
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