More than 4,000 parents have joined a group campaigning to prevent young children from owning smartphones, as concerns grow about online safety and the impact of social media on mental health.
The WhatsApp group Smartphone Free Childhood was founded by former school friends Clare Fernyhough and Daisy Greenwell in response to their fears around children’s smartphone use and the ‘norm’ of giving children smart devices when they enter secondary school.
‘I have a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old. Daisy has children the same age and we both felt very shocked and worried. We just didn’t want them to have a smartphone at 11, which seems to be the norm now.”
Fernyhough and Greenwell hoped the move would encourage parents to delay giving their children smartphones until at least age 14, and no access to social media until age 16.
But what they expected to be a small group of friends helping to empower each other has grown into a nationwide campaign after the group reached its 1,000-person capacity within 24 hours of Greenwell uploading a post. Instagram post to promote it.
“We were completely surprised by this,” Fernyhough said. “It just went crazy.â€
The pair encouraged people to set up local groups to meet demand. “Before our eyes, within half an hour, there were 30 local groups springing up across the country and just expanding and expanding,” Fernyhough said.
The group, transformed into a community so that more people can join, now has about 4,500 members.
Smartphones expose children to a “world they are not ready for” as they access pornography and content about self-harm and suicide, which can have a damaging impact on their mental health, Fernyhough said. “It struck me that they just don’t need one. At that age they don’t need a smartphone. A brick phone can do everything they need.â€
Research from Ofcom shows that 91% of children in Britain have a smartphone by the time they are eleven, and 44% by the time they are nine.
“We thought we had an extreme position and that’s why we wanted to have solidarity with each other, but what we’ve realized is that it’s actually like we’ve lifted the lid on something. here by accident and people really need to talk about this and a lot of people felt like we did but didn’t feel like they could talk about it,” Fernyhough said.
Esther Ghey, Brianna Ghey’s mother, earlier this week called for a complete ban on social media access for under-16s, saying more people will experience mental health problems unless tech companies take action to reduce access to harmful content to limit.
Brianna was murdered on February 11, 2023 and her mother believes she was vulnerable after spending so much time online.
The goal is to change the norm, Fernyhough said, so that when children reach the end of primary school, the class “comes together and says, ‘Let’s all postpone until at least age 14.’ means that all the children from your primary school go to secondary school with a critical mass of peers doing the same, reducing peer pressure.
“We don’t want our kids to be the only ones showing up at high school,” Fernyhough said. “That’s a nightmare and no one would do that to their child. But if 20%, 30%, or even 50% of the kids show up while the parents are making that decision, they’ll be in a much better position.
“They can live their childhood the way it should be, focus on their learning and enjoy the real world without spending their lives scrolling, which we all know is not good for them.”