On phones, my children are on the wrong side of history

IT SEEMS incredible today but around 2010, as smartphones first became ubiquitous, they were not just marketed as the ultimate convenience for modern living but also as a must-have kid’s toy – almost on a par with the latest Tamagotchi or computer game.

Naturally I gave into pester power and armed my children with what I naively thought was just a fad, if an expensive one.

By the time word leaked out about mobile phones promoting addictive behaviour, my children were teenagers, and it was impossible to whip the phones off them after I’d enjoyed the benefits of the electronic baby-sitter for years.

My benign indulgence was echoed in their schools where they were allowed to bring their phones into class – free, as I later realised to my horror, to watch porn under the desk or, should they be inclined to cruelty, bully nerds on social media.

Fast-forward to today and suffice to say that unless I’m eating alone with one of my kids, then their electronic companions join us too. Basically, it means they eat while scrolling through their ‘feed’, interrupting their screen gazing only to show one another a funny meme or a ridiculous tweet.

On special occasions, I insist on their putting their fifth limb away, but the moment I suffer a menopausal memory lapse about the name of say, John McEnroe’s nemesis at Wimbledon 1980, the phones reappear to give me the answer and the scrolling resumes.

When it comes to mobile phones, my children are on the wrong side of history, but that’s more the fault of timing than reckless parenting. Like any bad habit, from smoking to driving without a seat belt, their screen addiction was formed before the dangers were known, robbing parents of the chance to have informed and consistent rules about what became, for better or worse, a mainstay of their youth. We were just too late to the party, something which makes me slightly envious of today’s parents who have a far better idea of what they are dealing with.

The jury may still be out on whether mobile phones are responsible for the rise in mental health problems like depression and self-harming in children and adolescents, creating the socalled Anxious Generation, but it’s beyond doubt that technology has transformed childhood completely, and not in a good way.

Within a single generation, childhood has changed from playing in the great outdoors with friends to a phone-based isolation, with kids spending hours every day scrolling through the shiny happy posts of their friends and favourite influencers while watching material streamed to them by algorithms designed to keep them online as long as possible.

The consensus about the need to address this imbalance, and all its consequences for child development, culminated in a breakthrough announcement from Tánaiste Micheál Martin at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis about an initiative to tackle what he terms the ‘great new public health problem of our time – the impact on children of social media and being constantly online’.

The Tánaiste correctly identifies the way that while awareness is high about the hazards of the online world, the lack of uniform safeguards among schools and parents makes it harder for parents to have confidence in their rules.

While one school may ban smartphones during the day, another might have a written contract to that effect between parents, teachers and pupils.

Another school may be entirely laissez-faire.

There’s similar confusion on the home front. Reducing a child’s screen time to an hour in the evening may sound eminently sensible but if all the child’s classmates are online until after midnight, he or she may become lonely, out of the loop for social events and, worst of all, a target of mockery.

The prospect of a child suffering needlessly because of their absence from social media will prompt even the most avid free-range parent to relax their rules on electronics.

In order to create a consensus about dealing with this new world, the Government has sent guidance to all schools.

In addition, a joint initiative between Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, Minister of State for Mental Health Mary Butler, and Education Minister Norma Foley aims to support parents with correct guidance for navigating their child’s online life and provide a fund to support the banning of phones during the school day. Social media companies are also a significant part of the strategy.

‘To social media companies, our message is clear,’ writes Micheál Martin in yesterday’s Irish Mail on Sunday. ‘We want you to take concrete steps to get underage children off your apps. If you don’t take those steps, we will impose them on you.’

Given the recent refusal of social media firms to introduce age verification mechanisms on their platforms, the Tánaiste may be obliged to act on his threat of legislation sooner than later while Ms Foley may have to make good on her Ard Fheis promise of significant fines for breach of care by social media companies.

The task of online safety is not easy given the intransigence of rapacious social media companies and the almost impossible challenge of cleaning up the internet. Yet the introduction of standard guidance to schools and parents is a good start, something I wish I had when I first stepped into the Vodafone shop all those years ago and unwittingly signed my kids up to a new life in a parallel universe.

‘Childhood has changed to a phone-based isolation’ ‘Guidance to schools and parents is a good start’