When the history of social change campaigns of the early 21st century is written, it’s sure to include Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC). In a little over a year, an extraordinary movement has sprung from the grassroots, based on the principle that “childhood’s too short to be spent on a smartphone”.
It’s signed up hundreds of thousands of parents, reached millions more, secured the support of everyone from actor Benedict Cumberbatch and Adolescence writer Jack Thorne, to a clutch of MPs, and helped inspire everything from changes in school policies to the development of a new ‘childhood-friendly’ phone. At its heart, a simple suggestion: delay getting your child a phone until they’re 14, and access to social media until the age of 16. Give young minds a chance to develop free from the tyranny of the algorithms which, to put it mildly, have hardly been designed with their welfare in mind.
And it all started with a casual conversation during a playdate. Two mothers of eight-year-old girls from the same school year, chatting. And up popped the subject of phones. No, said one, she hadn’t bought her child a phone yet, because she hadn’t asked for one. But when she did, well, she supposed she would …
