Parents at a school in the Irish town of Greystones have introduced a “smartphone-free code” to reduce anxiety and screen time for their children.
By Le Figaro
Published 06/06/2023 at 13:34, updated 06/06/2023 at 14:06
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The “smartphone-free” pact is not mandatory, parents are free to provide their children with a telephone. Elena / stock.adobe.com
Parents in the Irish town of Greystones were fed up with seeing their children staring at their smartphones. Parents’ associations at eight primary schools in County Wicklow (eastern Ireland) last month introduced a “smartphone-free code” to reduce young people’s anxiety and screen exposure, the Guardian reports.
In concrete terms, this pact consists of removing the children’s telephones in the house and at school until they enter high school. “Childhood is getting shorter and shorter,” Rachel Harper, the principal of St Patrick’s School and leader of the initiative, told the English newspaper. They want a smartphone from the age of nine. It always starts younger.” Implementing this citywide policy “reduces the likelihood that a child will have a playmate with a smartphone.” Parents can present the code as a school rule,” she continued.
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In order to obtain the signing of this pact, the schools distributed questionnaires to the parents. This led to a meeting of all community actors, who then determined the content of the pact. The application is not mandatory, parents are free to provide their children with a phone. But Rachel Harper still had a significant number of filings and hopes “that will become the norm in the future,” she told the Guardian.
Banning or restricting smartphones only at school is not enough to curb the harmful effects of screens and social networks, especially since the Corona crisis, according to the parents’ associations report.
Expanded nationwide soon?
This local initiative caught the attention of Irish Health Minister Stephen Donnelly. He now wants to turn it into a national policy. “Ireland can and must be a world leader in ensuring that children and young people are not targeted and harmed in their interactions with the digital world,” he said in a column published on May 31 last year in published by the Irish Times.
“There are increasing reports of harm to children and young people from certain types of phone use, such as B. social media and internet use that damage their mental health,” he said. -he adds.
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In France, a bill creating a numerical majority, succeeding the National Assembly, passed its first reading on May 23 in the Senate. One of the aims is to oblige platforms to set up a mandatory system for age verification or parental consent in order to protect children from social networks and online hate.
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