Nothing has been able to stop smartphones taking over our lives and those of our children. But the inevitable backlash is in full flow. It’s not only about family arguments over screen-time restrictions, or the often futile efforts of parents to minimise exposure to adult, radicalising or consumerist content.
With the rising and interfere with children’s learning, creativity and concentration, and with more than 97% of 12-year-olds owning a smartphone, schools have been taking action. In February, the UK government on smartphones and some schools have since banned them. Also in February, two concerned parents created the .
The online community now has more than 120,000 members, “with a local group in every county in the UK and thousands of school groups within those”, according to the co-founder, Daisy Greenwell. But what do the pioneering minority of smartphone-free children make of all this? I’m the only person I know who doesn’t have a smartphone. I know they’re quite addictive.
Some of my friends are on Snapchat a lot – one of them has a three-hour screen-time limit on her phone and she uses up the whole thing with Snapchat. Some of my other friends, when we’re together, scroll on TikTok or YouTube, and I feel quite left out. Sometimes my friends communicate with people they haven’t met before from a different school, so I think social media is a good way of finding people.
But it also has negatives, because you can come into contact with people you do.