Recently, Daisy Greenwell, the features editor at Positive News, explained how she accidentally started a grassroots movement with a group of fellow parents who aimed to protect childhood from smartphones. It all began with a conversation she had with her friend, Clare, about the difficult decision parents had to make when deciding to give their children access to smartphones with the possibility of exposing them to porn, bullying, grooming, and the anxiety machine that social media can create. By the age of 12, 97% of British kids own a smartphone, but research over the past 15 years since smartphones became popular has shown that the younger children received a phone, the higher their incidence of mental illness.
Daisy and Clare decided to start a WhatsApp group called “Parents United for a Smartphone Free Childhood” to support each other on their decision to refuse smartphones for their kids. After posting about their group on Instagram, they reached the WhatsApp limit of 1,023 people. They started a second group that also reached the limit, showing that they were not alone. Parents, pediatric consultants, CEOs, taxi drivers, teachers and other people from all walks of life across Britain wanted to talk about the problem, share their experiences, offer support, and come together to find a solution.
As a result, Daisy, Clare, and her husband Joe worked tirelessly to harness this momentum while juggling work and kids, and a half-term holiday. They encouraged people to start their regional groups across the UK, and about 50 sprang up from Surrey to Scotland, from Norfolk to Wales. They even suggested parents start their own school-specific groups, as they believed the real power in eliminating the peer pressure lay within their schools and classes. Today, there is a Smartphone Free Childhood WhatsApp community in every UK county, and thousands of local school groups within those communities.
The issue of smartphones for children is a divisive one, and it can feel triggering to parents who have already given their kids smartphones. However, Daisy and Clare want to empower parents to have this discussion without any awkwardness, judgment, or division. They’ve created toolkits with experts to help bring people together over contentious issues and help everyone have the discussion in a cordial and productive way. They state that just as society marvels at the fact that cigarette companies used to market their products as healthy, people will look back on this era and ask why children were not protected from smartphones.
Daisy and Clare aim to empower parents to get together and change the norm, as childhood is too short to be spent on a smartphone. To learn more about this movement, visit smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk and check out @smartphonefreechildhood on Instagram
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