‘Eight year olds that fret over body image’
Pioneering school principal reveals what persuaded her school to lead way on smartphones ban in the classroom
THE principal of a primary school pioneering a smartphone ban said teachers became alarmed when children as young as eight were fretting about body image issues.
It comes as Education Minister Norma Foley launched a new Government initiative this week which aims to deter parents from buying smartphones for primary school pupils.
The guidelines, which will be issued to all primary schools in the country, encourage parents to hold off from giving their children phones that can access the internet until they reach secondary school – warning of the pathway they provide to inappropriate sexual and violent content.
The policy initiative is set against a backdrop of what principals say is an epidemic of anxiety among young children.
Rachel Harper, principal of St Patrick’s National School in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, said she has noticed an unprecedented level of anxiety among pupils in the last few years.
Last spring, she reached out to other principals in the area to see if they were experiencing a similar phenomenon – and found all of them were.
Ms Harper told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘We were seeing that, if there was any change in the school day or if the teacher wasn’t in or there was a last-minute field trip that we thought would be a nice treat, it would cause anxiety for the children.
‘The ages of nine or 10 were becoming the teenage years – we even found children aged eight becoming a lot more body conscious.
‘They would be looking to influencers to influence them and as we keep saying, at this age, the most formative years, their parents, family, friends, they should be their main influence. It’s not just the phones, but they weren’t helping the fact that life was just becoming so fast paced for children – and kids just get to a saturation point.’
So the principal decided to take action and worked with seven other primary schools in the Greystones area to introduce a voluntary phone ban which parents eagerly accepted.
And now two months into the school year, Ms Harper said she hopes her school’s example will become ‘the new norm’. She said: ‘It’s early days, but I definitely think we’ve slowed things down for the children – whether it’s in conversation within the classroom, or kids getting into WhatsApp groups way before their years.
‘As a parent said to me recently, “you wouldn’t let your child open the door to a roomful of strangers and leave them in there on their own” – and that’s what they’re essentially doing by having a phone in their hands. Hopefully with this model, it’s the new norm, that children of primary age don’t, or certainly, the majority of children don’t have smartphones until they go to secondary school.
‘We want the best for the children. And I think the strength in the voluntary ban as well is that parents always have the option and the choice to participate.’
Parents with children at the school, who spoke to the MoS this week, said they are very supportive of the smartphone ban.
Mother-of-two Kim Harris said she was initially utterly against giving her 10-year-old a smartphone – particularly when girls in her daughter’s class began to create TikTok videos on their older siblings’ accounts and post them online. But without one, her daughter was being excluded socially.
‘Kids were playing this video game online and there was an awful lot of bullying that happened through it. And as a parent, I was just absolutely against it,’ she said.
‘But there was a whole WhatsApp group with the parents of the kids that were playing this online game, and my daughter was left out of it.
‘There were meet-ups where they all played it together. My daughter was left out of this. So we ended up leaving the school because we were literally ostracised for not just joining in.’
Ms Harris also said she is worried about the impact of the internet on her eight-year-old son, who returning home from playing sport recently repeating a chant he was taught about the notorious misogynist and influencer Andrew Tate.
Voicing her support for the smartphone ban, she added: ‘I just feel sorry for any of them growing up in it, and I just want to best prepare my kids for the world.’
‘The ages of nine or 10 were becoming the teenage years’
‘I definitely think we’ve slowed things down’
‘I just want to prepare my kids for the world’
Laura Bourne, whose children are in junior and senior infants this year, added: ‘It [the ban] just alleviates a lot of the anxieties and worries that we had about going into school and as they get a little bit older how we were going to navigate that.’
‘I think once you explain to them the reasons why, and don’t just treat them as babies and discuss it with them properly and maturely, most of them kind of get it.
‘We’re working with the kids, we’re working with the parents, we’re supporting teachers, so everybody is part of this initiative. I think that’s the strength in us.’
Minister Foley has acknowledged the Government initiative launched this week was largely based on the success of the Greystones model.
As part of her department’s plan, funding will be provided for web safety lectures for parents looking to develop their own voluntary codes on smartphones.
The minister also said she is conscious of the pressure on parents to buy their children expensive devices such as iPhones for Christmas. Instead, she urged them to instead think of ‘other wonderful things that can be provided’.
Ms Foley stressed: ‘This is not a war on phones. This is just an acknowledgement that, of course students can have phones, they just don’t need, at primary school age, to have smartphones.’