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Smartphone-Free Childhood... and not only
I'm quite proud that my son's school has started an incredible campaign to delay children getting smartphones until they are 14 and socials until 16.
Incredible because it has gained such momentum that lots of other schools and parents in the UK and even outside the UK are embracing this idea, and this week a bill has been proposed in parliament to make it into a law.
Why am I sharing that?
Because sustainability is not just about the environment, it's also about people. But also because smartphones' downsides affect all of us, not only children.
Some scary stats:
- 90% of girls and 50% of boys say they’re sent explicit content they didn’t want to see.
- One in six teens report being cyberbullied in the past month, according to the World Health Organisation.
- 1 in 5 16 to 18-year-olds feels their life is not worth living - and a massive part of it is due to exposure to harmful content, negative comparison with others online and cyberbullying.
In the most basic way, being attached to a small device for 29 hours a week (that's the AVERAGE for 12-year-olds) emitting blue light and fast-moving images and being bombarded by potentially harmful content, alongside detaching from real human connections... doesn't sound like a good thing to me - the image below from Vecteezy.com is an illustration of what you commonly see in playgrounds and where kids hang out.
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So a couple of suggestions from me:
- If you have kids, take a look at https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/ and sign the "parent pact" then share it with others.
- Check your own use of smartphones:
- go to your Settings, check the Digital Wellbeing tab and prepare to be horrified (guilty as charged: this week my usage never went below 5 hours a day. OK, most of my family lives in Italy, so we text and videocall a lot, but 1 hour of Instagram a day?! Mmmh...);
- What else could you do in those hours of mindless scrolling? Deep work, creative activities, reading a book, going to the gym or for a walk are just some ideas.
- Then perhaps set some rules: no smartphone between 8 pm and 8 am; smartphone-free zones at home; set a limit on social media usage; no smartphone when you are with others, etc.
This article was originally written for the Green Gorilla weekly newsletter. If you liked it, subscribe to receive more articles like this and learn how to communicate sustainability better, how to be more productive without selling your soul to the work devil, and how to make an impact in the world. Here is the link: https://newsletter.thegreengorilla.co.uk/
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