Local mum, Gemma Taylor, is a Regional Leader for Smartphone Free Childhood, the parent-led grassroots movement aiming to change the norms around smartphone ownership and access to social media for children. She says:
“Across our regions, we are speaking with school leaders, parents, hosting information evenings at schools or in public spaces and speaking with MPs and councillors to highlight this issue and create conversations around the problem. These conversations are happening up and down the country. Via the Parent Pact, parents can be united in delaying giving children smartphones until age 14 and social media until 16. Almost 140,000 pacts have been signed nationally and Surrey is leading the regions in number of parent pacts with currently 8,421 across 396 schools,with Farnham leading the number of sign ups.
“Several Junior Schools and Primaries in Godalming and Guildford are now going smartphone free from September 2025 and I’m in discussion with my daughter’s secondary school about how they can improve their policy, though it’s slower progress. All schools going smartphone free would be a great step in helping to establish new norms around smartphone ownership for children but it is not the only solution; this is a deep and complex issue and until the government makes statutory changes and begins to hold tech companies accountable, parents up and down the country realise that delaying giving our children smartphones is the swiftest and most effective solution to safeguard them.
“I’ve added further details below around the dangers and a personal aside about how I got involved below.”
So what are the issues with Smartphones?
Addictive by design: smartphones are experience blockers, preventing kids from engaging in the real world and having the childhood experiences that are vital for their healthy development. Kids are commonly spending “6, 7, 8, 9 hours a day on their devices, often more” according to Ofcom, which is the same as a part-time job!
Mental health impacts: Research shows that the younger kids get their first smartphone, the worse their mental health is today.
Harmful content: Having unrestricted access to the internet in your pocket creates a gateway to extreme content and viewpoints that we wouldn’t expose our children to in real life.
Not to mention cyberbullying, sleep deprivation, attention problems, family arguments over screen time, etc…
Despite all this, a fifth of British 3- and 4-year old’s own a smartphone, a quarter of 5-7 year old’s do, and by the age of 12, just 11% of kids are smartphone-free.
- Parents have been put in an impossible position – either they give their child a smartphone with all the known harms, or they isolate them from their peers at a crucial time in their development. This is not about good or bad parenting. Due to the network effect of smartphones, parents feel they have no choice in the matter and children are losing out.
On a personal note, this was exactly how I felt last year, when my eldest daughter was in Year 6. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of giving my 11-year-old a smartphone when they started secondary school and yet I was about to sleep walk into giving her one as everyone around us, all her friends, were being given them. A good friend (not local to me though) introduced SFC and it gave me the confidence to stick to my guns in not getting her a smartphone and start to more actively encourage other parents to do the same. But it’s not easy to be that parent to go against the grain so having these parent pacts to unite and empower parents has already shifted the landscape massively in the last year.
- Smartphones are really pocket supercomputers. These are adult devices in the hands of children. The internet and social media apps are not safe spaces for children. Regulation takes years, so the only option available to parents – whilst we wait for regulation to catch up – is to take collective action to delay giving our children smartphones by signing the Parent Pact.
- This is the new frontier in parenting, for all parents, everywhere. We are the first generation of parents in history to have to deal with this problem. Every parent in every home across the country is grappling with this question of when to get their child a smartphone and how to protect them once they do. There is a vacuum of information or guidance from the government or the NHS about what age is the right age to get a smartphone, or how young is too young. Currently all the responsibility to protect children lies on the shoulders of parents, who are no match for the addictive algorithms designed by huge teams of engineers in Silicon Valley.
- It’s ok to delay. We’re not saying no phones ever, we’re saying let’s wait until our kids are a bit older. If parents want to stay in touch and ensure their kids are safe en route to school, a brick phone is a great alternative option. They can use the internet on a family laptop or at school. We’re not anti-tech, we’re pro childhood.
- What can parents do now? Join together with other parents in your school and community to take action for our kids. Sign the Parent Pact to delay smartphones until at least 14, via the Smartphone Free Childhood website, and then see how many others in your school and year group have signed too. Connect with those people via your SFC school WhatsApp group – if there isn’t one yet, you can start one yourself. When we take collective action, the peer pressure problem goes away.
