Kids gave up smartphones ...but gained genuine pals

FRIENDS – remember THE US couple who kept their them? No, not the cast of 13 children starved, David and an ancient television comedy, Louise Turpin were in court this but proper friends. week. Apparently the kids were Not people you’ve never kept locked up for days on end, met who happen to have liked with nothing to do… except write the same video on a social media in journals. So, stupid and cruel: if site and who then accepted you’re going to ill-treat your kids, your ‘friend request’, but human don’t let them note the evidence. beings you actually know and like. Remember when you’d brains, and we know all about the collateral have laughed your head off at risks of online bullying, premature sexualisation, gambling and gaming the idea of a ‘friend request’, because addictions, porn exposure. Only friends weren’t units of this week, the World Health Organization social currency, to be acquired formally classified an addiction to and collected like loyalty club video games as a mental health disorder, so the dangers of unchecked screen cards? Friends were made, over time can no longer be disputed. But the time, friendships were won, not friendship thing, that was completely requested, and you counted unexpected.

your true friends in single digits, If you’d asked them three months ago, all of those sixth-class pupils would not dozens. Your friends might have told you that they had friendships, not have liked all your holiday loads of them. They had friends on snaps or your hobbies or your Instagram, they had friends on Snapchat, taste in music, but it was enough they had friends on Twitter, they might even have ‘friended’ their grannies that they liked you. and aunts on Facebook. What they

Friendships, as in proper real life didn’t have – and, more worrying still, friendships, between children have what they didn’t know they didn’t have been one unexpected blessing of a – were pals. Pals are people you seek groundbreaking Kerry school’s smartphone out and sit with at lunchtime, instead ban. According to Terry of eating your sandwich with your nose O’Sullivan, the principal of Blennerville stuck in a phone. Pals kick a ball back National School, he’s noticed friendships to you, rather than click ‘like’ on your developing between his pupils in Instagram posts. Pals walk to school the weeks since they gave up their with you, and help figure out homework phones. And it was only as he said it, it and chat for hours in your bedroom at was only as he marvelled over something weekends. Without their phones, it that would once have been a commonplace seems, kids turn to other kids for sight in schoolyard lunch company – who saw that coming? times, that you realised just how much

And who’d have thought, as Terry discovered, their smartphone attachment is truly that they wouldn’t be bothered costing our kids. replacing their smartphones with

For months now this newspaper has ordinary Nokias? So much for the been campaigning for a nationwide adults’ defence that their children want uptake of the scheme that Terry phones to make arrangements and O’Sullivan has run, with great success, plans – when they couldn’t do social in Kerry. His experimental ban on media and games, they weren’t interested. smartphones for sixth class pupils has They were just as happy to borrow been such a hit with parents and pupils their parents’ phones to make their alike that he’s keeping it on, and plans, or even to have their parents expanding it to the whole school. And organise their outings between themselves he has, as all the experts could have in the ‘traditional way’, as Terry predicted, seen the inevitable benefits put it. So getting rid of smartphones, to the children’s schoolwork, attention then, might make parents more aware spans and contentment levels. His of their children’s movements, where pupils are happier, more focused, more they’re going and who they’re with, rested, more active. None of this could when they need to be collected and how have taken anyone by surprise, at least they’re getting home. Perhaps smartphones not if you’ve been heeding the Mail have lulled us all into a false campaign. We know by now the dangers sense of security, into thinking that of excessive smartphone use to young ‘ring me if there’s a problem’ covers every eventuality: just because a young person has a smartphone with them, as the tragic deaths of Cameron Reilly and Ana Kriegel suggest, doesn’t always mean they’re safe.

The Blennerville pupils didn’t replace their smartphones with dumb ones because, surprise, surprise, they’d discovered the joys of face-to-face conversation: they’d discovered friendship.

If you’d asked them three months ago, they’d probably have said they were gritting their teeth and going along with the experiment to humour a popular, inspiring headmaster. Now, they’re revelling in their freedom from ‘likes’ and trolls and games and screens, and happy to set an example to their younger schoolmates. And, if Terry O’Sullivan’s initiative gets the support it truly deserves, to the whole country. THERE’S only one person on the face of the planet that Donald Trump fears, and that’s Melania Trump. It’s true that her choice of jacket on Thursday’s visit to Texas to visit a child migrant centre may have raised eyebrows, but if she hadn’t denounced Trump’s child separation policy, it’d still be happening, full stop. She may well have been having major surgery, during her recent disappearance, but I suspect she was giving him a taste of the embarrassment he’ll face if she’s not there, the perfect Stormys that will be unleashed.