THE SCHOOL PRINCIPALS WHO BACK AGE LIMITS ON PHONES

EXCLUSIVE: 92 head teachers tell the Mail they support a ban on smartphones for under-14s

DOZENS of Irish school principals have backed the Irish Daily Mail’s campaign to set a minimum age for children to own smartphones.

In the past two weeks, 92 principals from across the country have told this paper they back the idea of an age restriction.

Smartphone ownership among children has been linked to higher risk of anxiety, depression and suicide – as well as grooming and early sexualisation.

Some of those who would like to see a ban have questioned whether it is possible to make

one workable – but are still clear that they’d like to see one in place if it were possible.

The support from principals, who are at the front line of dealing with the effects of smartphones on children, will give further impetus to the growing campaign to have a minimum age set by law – just as it is for drinking, driving, gambling or getting married.

Among the principals who have said they would like to see an age limit on smartphones is Michael Horan, principal at St Brendan’s National School in Rathcoole, Co. Cork. He told the Mail last week that smartphones for children were ‘a craze that’s gone too far’.

‘There’s absolutely no reason why a child in primary school needs a smartphone, absolutely none,’ he said, adding that a secondary school age limit would be more appropriate. ‘They don’t have the maturity for it, or the comprehension of what trouble they can get into with WhatsApp groups, with sending Snapchats to each other, sending pictures in particular.’

Principal Karen Jordan, of St Catherine’s National School in Dublin 8, said that she does not believe children under 14 ‘have the maturity to be able to fully understand the permanence of posting, the dangers they are open to and the consequences of their actions’.

Helen Coe, principal of Our Lady’s Meadow School in Durrow, Co. Laois, said that introducing a minimum age of ownership would help remove the pressures being put on parents to buy their children smartphones.

‘I think it would make it easier on parents because peer pressure has a lot to do with getting a phone,’ she told the Mail. ‘It would be some help to say, “It’s against the law, you can’t have an iPhone”.’

While the damage smartphones cause to children’s health is now well-documented, some principals also suggested problems with the phones were not limited to pupils. David Madden, principal of St Joseph’s Secondary School in Louth, cited an incident in which a particular student recorded a teacher on two occasions with the intention of posting the videos on social media.

Many of the principals who were contacted saw that there was a proliferation of smartphone ownership amongst children – some of them even junior infants pupils – often as a result of peer pressure.

Niamh Murray, principal of Kilmacanogue National School in Co. Wicklow, expressed her support for the Mail’s campaign and said that she believed that where young children were involved, ‘parents would definitely buy into it, if there was a culture of a ban on smartphones’.

Ms Murray added that ‘at the end of the day, if parents set a culture at home where children did not have access to their phones, then their children certainly wouldn’t have access to any inappropriate material on the phone, and essentially the message would go from home to home until it proliferated to the wider society’.

Principal Paddy Martin, of St Mochta’s National School in Louth village, told the Mail that ‘nobody wants their child to be put in the hand of a predator’, adding: ‘If they knew the extent of it and how bad it was, obviously there wouldn’t be a parent alive who would be in favour of them.’

Many of the principals suggested that some parents were naïve to the

‘Don’t realise extent to what goes on’

dangers that their children faced – with one national school principal labelling many parents ‘a little bit clueless’ and saying that they ‘don’t realise the extent of what goes on.’

The head of a national school in Galway added that if parents ‘knew what can happen online, they would be supportive [of the ban]’.

Already, two national opinion polls, plus a further online survey, have found that a clear majority of Irish adults would like to see an age limit for smartphones.

A poll by the TheJournal.ie showed 75.7% of people in favour of an under14s smartphone ban, while a national poll for RTÉ’s Claire Byrne Live showed 56% in favour of a limit set at 13. Meanwhile, an Irish Daily Mail/Ireland Thinks poll in December showed 69% support of an under-16s ban.

However, some of the principals who said they supported the idea of an age limit added that they also believed smartphones were an unavoidable part of the future. Principal Joseph Leacy, of Coill Dubh in Kildare, said: ‘You can’t bury your head in the sand about them. Technology is important. It’s part of our world.’

Mr Leacy is trying to educate his students with ‘numerous programmes such as those available on webwise.ie or Zeeko Internet Safety Guide’.

Advocates of a ban, however, point out that education alone is not used to protect children from drinking, driving or gambling – all of which have legal age limits. There are also growing doubts as to the ability of education alone to protect children from online sexual predators, many of whom are highly adept at grooming.

Support for the Mail’s campaign has grown since the case of Matthew

Horan, 26, a paedophile from Clondalkin, Dublin, who was jailed for seven-and-a-half years last month for grooming primary school girls – mostly on their smartphones. The parents of two nine-year-olds who were groomed into performing sex acts for Horan on Skype revealed that their daughters had bought their smartphones with their Communion money – in order to watch cartoons. They said they would never get over the trauma of finding out what their children were exposed to online.

A ten-year-old victim of Horan said that she had thought that she was ‘safe’ on the internet – and that when she began conversing online with Horan she was simply ‘making a new friend’.

However, several principals who spoke to the Mail complained that many previous attempts to educate parents regarding the dangers of smartphones and the internet had not been successful.

In all, the Mail asked more than 2,000 school principals whether they had a policy on smartphones, and whether they personally supported a minimum age for smartphones. As of last Thursday, 100 had replied. In total, 92 said they supported an age limit, though eight of those did qualify their answers by questioning whether such a limit could be introduced.