Ex-Childline worker says now children want ban on smartphone
A FORMER Childline worker has called for a ban on young children owning smartphones, saying they lose sleep and are unable to concentrate in school because of their addiction to them.
Monica Rowe, who worked as a school liaison officer for the ISPCC, said schools now contact her about children as young as nine ‘sexting’, and warns that they are extremely vulnerable online.
She has called for a minimum age for smartphone ownership and now tours schools giving internet safety talks through her new venture, Key Conversations, which aims to educate children about the dangers online.
She said children actually tell her they don’t want to be on social media any more.
And while emphasising that she was speaking on her own behalf and not for Childline, she told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘What’s most interesting to me now is how children view their own online safety and addiction to the internet. Children are far more ahead of all this than we think or like to believe. They all understand that they are spending too much time on their phones and they are losing sleep and not being able to function in school. This is what they tell me on a yearly basis when I visit their schools.
‘An interesting question I ask during my presentations in schools is: “How many of you wish social media was gone in the morning”. Almost always, all of the hands in the class go up, because our children know that it’s not normal how social media makes them feel. It’s the fear of missing out that keeps them there. I have had students tell me they are actually addicted to their phones and the internet.
‘They say that checking their smartphone is the last thing they do at night and often they are upset by what they see.’
Ms Rowe was an ISPCC/Childline school liaison officer for four years until last year when she set up her own business, but she still volunteers with Childline.
An undercover exposé recently revealed how Facebook is happy to publish videos showing violent child abuse, savage fighting between schoolchildren and appalling animal cruelty,
Undercover footage in the Channel 4 exposé showed how Facebook ignores the presence of underage users on its site, with workers who monitor it told to pretend they are blind if they spot posters under the official age of 13. Ms Rowe, who is a mother, believes it is time for action, before it’s too late. While most of her work used to involve secondary schools, she is now being asked more and more to speak at primary schools.
She praised the Kerry school principal Terry O’Sullivan, of Blennerville National School, who led the way for schools fighting smartphone problems.
The Tralee school became the first in the country to impose a ban on smartphone use inside and outside school, and others are expected to follow suit.
Ms Rowe told the Mail: ‘Personally speaking, I don’t think any school should have smartphones on the premises. Many students take their phones out in class, and this is what they know because we as adults do it too.’
She said: ‘I have had schools contact me because of serious sexting with both primary and secondary schools, one of the youngest children encountering this problem was nine years old. And she does not think a ban would stop vulnerable children contacting helplines such as Childline. ‘It is a phone service which children can ring and text, and this can be done from any phone. It doesn’t have to be a smartphone,’ she said.
‘If I was parent now of a child under the age of 16, I would not be giving them a smartphone, if you want to stay in contact with your child, that’s fair enough but there are alternative basic-button phones. A smartphone is not a phone, it’s a computer you can ring people on. To me, the basic button phone is the only option. Because of the area I work in I see how anxious children are.’
Polls have repeatedly shown most parents support a ban – including an Irish Daily Mail poll in January revealed over twothirds of people support a ban.
More primary schools seek advice
OUR priority as a society must always be to protect and safeguard the most vulnerable among us.
For that very reason, this newspaper continues with our long-running campaign for a legislative ban on children having smartphones until they reach a suitable age.
The myriad dangers involved are clear for all to see. They principally involve the online threat posed by bullying, pornography and grooming by paedophiles.
But other related issues are also of concern. The use of smartphones is closely linked to a detrimental impact on youngsters’ concentration levels and sleeping patterns, as well as affecting the amount of physical exercise they get. It is worrying in the extreme to think that 15% of youngsters are now spending more than three hours a day staring at their handsets.
Against that backdrop, the observations of Monica Rowe – who spent four years as an ISPCC/Childline school liaison inspector – are to be greatly welcomed. Ms Rowe, who still volunteers for Childline, now works for herself by visiting schools around the country to give talks on internet safety. She also supports the introduction of a minimum age for smartphone ownership.
Perhaps her most valuable contribution, though, relates to our young’s own attitudes to the digital world they inhabit. She says schoolchildren ‘almost always’ say they wish social media was no longer part of their lives. According to Ms Rowe’s account, they realise they are spending too much time online and that it simply isn’t doing them any good. But the fear of missing out – which is peer pressure, essentially – keeps them going back for more.
Even more worrying is the fact that Ms Rowe is receiving an increasing number of requests to speak to primary school pupils. Children as young as nine, she says, are now involved in so-called ‘sexting’.
The most telling thing in this is that the youngsters are starting to recognise social media has become a problem. That is surely the clearest sign yet that our political leaders should take immediate action.
Plans to set the digital age of consent at 13 were defeated. And while the Department of Education’s decision to write to every school in the country about the use of smartphones, tablets and video-recording devices is undoubtedly a good thing, its measures haven’t gone far enough.
The bottom line is that we need an ageappropriate ban on smartphones before any more children have to suffer.