Colman Noctor: Preteens too young to manage smartphone responsibility

Owning a smartphone is not a ‘right’; it is a responsibility, and this is not possible developmentally for pre-teens.

During the Q&A session, parents described the Hobson’s choice of protecting their child from owning a smartphone but risking their child becoming isolated from their peers if they don’t have one.

In an ideal world, parents would not allow their children access to smart technology until they are ready to manage it, but we don’t live in an ideal world.

Instead, according to the most recent research by Cybersafe Kids, 87% of children under the age of 12 own a smartphone, making the ‘right’ advice difficult to implement.

While I see the benefits of holding off introducing a child to smartphone ownership until they at least complete primary school, I also acknowledge how hard that decision can be for parents who worry about their child missing out on peer interaction.

If a sixth-class child does not have access to a smartphone when their peers have one, they will most likely miss out on conversations, news, gossip, and potential meet-ups. It is challenging for even the most disciplined parents to withstand this pressure.

Imagine a scenario where most parents permit their children to play in a busy town square, but you keep your child at home to keep them safe.

While you are not in the wrong, it doesn’t make the choice any easier. Similarly, when most children in a primary school class have a smartphone and most of their social communication happens on platforms like Snapchat, the child without access will miss out.

Consider how difficult it would be to stay on top of things as an adult without having WhatsApp on your phone. As a parent of three, almost every communication about my children’s lives occurs on this app.

Whether it’s a poll to determine who is available for a GAA match at the weekend or to locate a lost school jumper, parents’ WhatsApp groups are vital for communication.

Cause for concern 

Smartphones went from luxury to ubiquity in 2010, when the iPhone went mainstream. While the direct causation of smartphone use and mental health is complex and not definitive, research gives us reason for concern.

In 2023, the Pew Research Center in the US found that excessive smartphone usage weakens social bonds, increases loneliness, sadness, and social anxiety and leads to emotional instability and inattentiveness in children. The link between sleep issues and increased usage is indisputable in separate studies.

I can confidently state that children of primary school age are too young to own a smartphone.

However, I can no longer state with the same confidence that stopping your child from engaging with their peers on social media platforms will not lead to negative social consequences.

The majority of parents have already decided to give young children a phone. While I would have been critical of the first parents to buy a child a smartphone, I am less critical now.

It was much more straightforward when only a handful of children had access to these devices, but the balance has tipped, so that decision is much harder for parents.

This is why the collective agreement of parents to hold off buying smartphones, like the initiative in north Dublin, is so important. If we control the number of children who own smartphones, the risk/benefit analysis becomes much more straightforward. If there is no risk of children being left out of social groups, then the decision to hold off on purchasing one is much simpler.

Of course, some will say that parents should not be influenced by the majority, and they may even scoff at the concept of a child missing out on social media interaction.

However, when we consider the social and emotional impact of lockdowns and how the pandemic escalated the integration of technology into children’s lives, the struggle to hold off buying a phone for a child when most of their peers have one is real.

Over-reliant on devices

We coached children throughout the pandemic to communicate through digital platforms and many learned how to interact with their peers using this template, leading to an over-reliance on technology.

In doing so, we may have to concede we have created a generation of ‘lost children’. The 87% of primary school children who currently own smartphones are in this group. However, we have a unique opportunity to protect the nine- and 10-year-olds coming through the primary school system who have yet to own a smartphone, so they don’t suffer the same fate.

By limiting the use of social media to communicate, children have no option but to engage in the real world. If you are the only child in fifth class with Snapchat, the platform is useless to you. If you are the only child without Snapchat in fifth class, it’s a different story.

I was initially sceptical of these voluntary codes when Education Minister Foley announced ‘a smartphone ban’ late last year and wondered if the initiative lacked teeth.

I feared the ban would only exist in pockets of affluent areas where parent associations had the means to organise these initiatives, and less-affluent areas would be left behind. But, thankfully, I’ve been proved wrong: My email inbox is packed with parent associations enquiring how best to set up similar voluntary codes around the country. We need a government organisation to take the lead on not buying smartphones in primary schools and offer parents and teachers time and support to implement these initiatives.

School voluntary codes are the start of managing our children’s relationship with smart devices. These initiatives buy us time to delay the unfettered introduction of children to the online world.

What we do with this window of opportunity is crucial.

One area that needs to be addressed is shifting our emphasis from internet safety to media literacy. We should teach children how to be ‘critical friends’ of technology and to use it on their terms, rather than those of tech companies.

In the meantime, a nationwide agreement to hold off buying children smartphones until secondary school would go a long way toward protecting this precious and endangered life phase.

• Dr Colman Noctor is a child psychotherapist