The city that was the first in the world to ban children from having mobile phones

One day, the parents decided that they didn’t want their children to spend their most creative years glued to the screen of a mobile phone… And this is not the beginning of a fairy tale at all.

A pilot program by the Irish city of Greystones, which asked parents not to buy mobile phones for their children until they go to secondary school, was crowned with great success.

The results were unexpected, according to the British newspaper The Sun. Recent data from carrier Ofcom shows that 20% of three-year-olds have a smartphone. This percentage increases to 55% between the ages of eight and 11.

At first, the inhabitants of a seaside town in Ireland decided they didn’t want their children to spend time in front of a mobile phone screen “from the cradle”. That’s why the mothers of the city immediately mobilized. They joined forces and came to the conclusion that they agree that their children should not have smartphones until they cross the threshold of high school.

So All eight elementary schools in the Irish city, 24 kilometers south of Dublin, have asked students not to bring electronic devices with them.. In the same time school associations of parents and guardians took matters into their own hands by agreeing to ban mobile phones in toddler and primary schools.

“This is a revolutionary approach that is likely to be welcomed by parents in Britain,” comments the corresponding publication.

A Vodafone survey published this week found that for some parents, deciding when to buy their child’s first mobile phone was as difficult as choosing which school to send them to..

Last July The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Agency (UNESCO) has asked schools around the world to ban mobile phones in all classrooms..

When a Sun reporter visited the town of Greystones in County Wicklow, local residents expressed their opinion that they were “very grateful for the opportunity to free children from gadget addiction (always connected to social networks). Ms. Sania Schubert, who has lived in Greystones for 25 years, the mother of the child, has already rushed to give her consent to the innovative decision of the municipal authorities and the Association of Parents and Guardians: “I have three more years not to buy a smartphone for my daughter. I think that most people will be forced to buy a cell phone for their child, because it is their peers. However, the more children who do not have a mobile phone, the easier the situation for parents,” she emphasizes.

More than 70% of parents in daughter Anya’s class agreed not to buy smartphones for their children. Only 5% of parents believe that when their children reach high school, only then will they be able to withstand the “obsessive pressure of the Internet” on their already sufficiently strengthened psyche. Mother Caroline Nolan also agreed not to buy smartphones for her sons until they finish elementary school, that is, they reach the age of 12. “As a family, we have made it clear to our children that they will not have phones until after elementary school. And we are very strict about this,” she says.

The abuse of social media by the younger generation is blamed for the mental health crisis that more and more teenagers are facing.

A report from the UK National Health System (NHS), published in November last year, showed that hA quarter of young people aged 17 to 19 in England are at risk of developing mental health problems. For a 20-year-old, this probability is about one-sixth.

“Two girls recently committed suicide due to bullying and abuse on social media,” the father of three girls told the Sun newspaper, applauding the actions of the municipal and school authorities of the Irish town. Now other cities in Ireland are considering implementing a similar policy, writes the British newspaper The Sun, seeing the positive results of an idea that arose from parents living in Greystones.

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