Richard Hogan: A primary school child has no business with a smartphone
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Christmas is upon us again.
Houses are being decorated and a wintry moon hangs over chimney tops. Christmas FM will soon be belting out festive songs and snow (or rain) might fall.
Whichever, I love this time of year, with the dreams of Santa coming and all that promises.
The excitement is magic.
If you’re a parent of a child in primary school and they are asking you for a smartphone for Christmas, please listen to what I am about to say.
Firstly, smartphones are not phones. ‘Phone’ makes them seem innocuous, harmless, just a device to call your child on. But children don’t use them as phones.
No. Smartphones are ‘endless internet-access devices’. That’s what we should call them.
You’ll see what I mean the minute you give your child the ‘phone’. They will disappear into them, not to phone anyone, but to connect to Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and Discord.
The child that once played with you, or sat and chatted with you, will now be in their bedroom, alone, illuminated by blue light and connected to everything the online world has to offer: The good, bad, and the very ugly.
A primary school child has no business having a smartphone. If we all agreed on that, how much easier it would be for us to parent.
Initiatives rolled out by schools to limit smartphone use are welcome. Every school should be onboard, so children are free to concentrate on their studies and socialise.
Lunch time would be noisy once again. I was in a school recently and the principal said to me, ‘Once they banned phones in school, the school burst into life again’.
She said: “It was the noise that I noticed immediately, the students laughing and chatting with each other.”
How have we allowed these devices to hijack our children’s social life so easily? And for the profit of these unscrupulous tech giants? I often wonder what we will say, when we look back on this period and how passive we all were.
I advise parents to postpone their child’s smartphone ownership because of all the troubled young people I have worked with over the years.
I have worked on too many cases where this has happened. It is the end of childhood. It’s a hard full stop on innocence.
Currently, there are no blockers to stop your child from accessing damaging material. It is a huge problem, and we need the next government to step up and put the health of our children first.
This week, I spoke with Tánaiste Micheál Martin and I asked him about the Government’s commitment to dealing with technology in our children’s lives.
The Tánaiste said that he views social media as the biggest public health threat of this era. He told me that he met Dr Anthony Fauci this year, and that Dr Fauci outlined the growing research in the US on the negative impact technology is having on children.
I asked him about the mental-health bill, which has been delayed, with the dissolution of the Dáil. And Mr Martin assured me that if Fianna Fáil were back in government it would be enacted within months.
I also asked him about the easy access children have to pornography. He said that AI has advanced so much that it is possible to stop children from accessing it.
He acknowledged the role of big tech and their responsibility for the content they produce. It really feels like things are about to change with social media in our children’s lives.
But we can’t rely on our government to parent our children. So, think before you hand over that device.
Pornography is embedded into these internet devices. And it’s not just pornography: It’s the videos they will see on TikTok or Instagram. They will be pushed content about diets, appearance, self-harm, animal cruelty, depression, and violence.
I’m not trying to scare parents, but to wake them up to what these devices are really about and why you should delay bringing them into your child’s life.
As the Tánaiste said, there is significant research to back up the negative impact social media is having on our children. It’s time for us to act on that research.
My daughter asked me for a phone for Christmas a few years ago and I’ve always said the same thing; Santa doesn’t bring children phones. Now she is nearly 14, and asking again.
The answer is the same. Her raised eyebrow is funny, but doesn’t change the outcome.
Childhood should be a time of friendships and experiences, where we learn about ourselves in relation to others.
Building true resilience is about being connected to others and feeling you are a valuable member of your community.
Smartphones are here to stay, but delaying the arrival of one into your child’s world could be the greatest gift you ever gave your child for Christmas.