Why I support a ban on smartphones for children

Kids have been caused incalculable harm by these devices - and we adults have been asleep at the wheel

Photo: Graham Crumb (Wikimedia Commons)

A spectre is haunting Britain’s youth – the spectre of technology. Not all technology, of course. On the contrary, many modern-day technological innovations have undeniably made the lives of our children more comfortable than they would otherwise have been.

Rather, I speak of those objects which, if we didn’t know better, we might assume were an integral physical part of all young humans, so rare it is to see the two things separated from each other.

I speak of smartphones, the devices to which so many kids in Britain have become slaves and which pose a threat to their security and innocence of a magnitude that, I fear, many are still to grasp.

It isn’t just that these instruments seem to consume inordinate amounts of the time of our youngsters, limiting their attention spans and almost certainly impeding their long-term learning capabilities; it’s also that they expose them to a regular slurry of toxic, and often obscene, material – things they will never be able to un-see or un-read.

Like fire, the internet has the capacity to be both a wonderful friend and a dangerous enemy. For too many youngsters, it is the latter, luring them – usually through the medium of social media – into a world of pornography, violence, bullying and much else. The smartphone is their portal through to this world.

Some high-profile cases – such as the suicides of cyberbullying victims Mia Janin and Molly Russell – have shone a momentary spotlight on the dangers. But then the media bandwagon rolls on until the next tragedy.

And what of the incidents – there must be an incalculable number daily – that never reach the media but nonetheless wreak havoc on the minds and emotions of our young people?

As the American social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt, told the BBC this week, ‘By the end of the 2010s it was clear … there’s been a huge increase in anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide … and there’s plenty of evidence now linking the phone-based childhood to that epidemic.’

All of this persuades me that we need a total ban on smartphone and social media use for under-16s. If we are serious about protecting young people, we should safeguard them against these real and present dangers without delay. And we need to get behind the growing number of adults who have grasped the nettle and launched campaigns – such as UsForThem and Stick to Bricks – to highlight the dangers.

Frankly, I can’t believe we haven’t already done it.

Recent research by Ofcom showed that a quarter – yes, a quarter – of three- and four-year-olds own a smartphone. This is surely the reddest of red flags. It’s bad enough teenagers being drawn into the sewer of filth, let alone kids who are little more than toddlers.  

Isn’t it a shameful irony that in an age when we focus so intently, almost to the point of obsession, on the mental health of youngsters – even providing ‘safe spaces’ in our educational establishments so as to shield them from ‘offensive’ opinions – we are so willing to turn a blind eye to this most serious threat to their emotional well-being.   

And aside from the real harmful psychological effects, there are risks to the physical health of youngsters from being constantly hooked up to their smartphones. Many will spend their evenings and weekends – sometimes into the early hours – cooped up in their bedrooms, scrolling, messaging and browsing, when once they might have knocked on a friend’s door and done something involving a modicum of physical effort.  

The truth is that, for too long, the risks to children posed by smartphone and social media use barely featured on the radars of most adults, including our educators and politicians. For many parents, the smartphone has become a cheap and convenient babysitter, a tool to enable them to keep their demanding youngster quiet and (for now, at least) under control.

Others have been too quick to dismiss concerns as the hobby horse only of conservative types – such as backbench Tory MP Miriam Cates, who has led the calls for a ban. But when even the progressive Guardian urges action, as it did in a leading article a few weeks ago, you know that this is a cause that now transcends political tribalism.

The government’s recent announcement of a consultation on children’s use of mobile phones and social media is a start. But, as ever, the devil will be in the detail, and ministers must not indulge the inevitable howls of anguish that will emit from the mouths of Big Tech bosses.

The technological revolution is here to stay. None of us can stop it, and neither should we try to do so. But we can mitigate the revolution’s most harmful effects. Our children face a lifetime in the service of computer screens and digital gadgetry. It behoves us now to allow them a few precious years of freedom and to teach them that another world – a real, physical world, of friends, neighbours, parks, books, hobbies, travel, adventure, sport and more – exists beyond the smartphone screen.

Because, for all the talk that youngsters are more ‘connected’ than ever before, the reality is that many of them are not connected at all. 

---

Every now and then, amid the usual barrage of dross that appears online, something will truly warm your heart. A video of an incident last week on a Minnesota highway did that for me. No explanation is needed - suffice to say I think we can all agree that it shows humanity at its finest. Watch the video here.

---

As a proud and committed trade unionist, I’d like to wish all my readers a happy May Day - the international day of the worker!

---

A reminder that you can follow me on X/Twitter: @PaulEmbery