The Netmums Podcast - S15 Ep4: Smartphone Free Childhood Founders Daisy Greenwell and Joe Ryrie on the power of a parent collective and the pressures of social media on children

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Netmums hosts Wendy Golledge and Alison Perry join smartphone-free campaigners Daisy Greenwell and Joe Ryrie to discuss whether a smartphone free childhood is the right approach for our children today. Daisy and Joe started the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign in February 2024, after one Whatsapp message went viral and later grew into a movement with over 200,000 members! They talk about their journey from being concerned parents to leading a national campaign, tackling the challenges and pressures of smartphones and social media on children.  The chat covers the risks of kids having unrestricted smartphone access such as exposure to harmful content and social media addiction. They also discuss the balance between enjoying tech benefits and keeping kids safe online.  You'll hear about the importance of parents working together, tech companies' roles, and the need for rules to ensure kids have age-appropriate tech access. If you're a parent struggling with setting smartphone boundaries, this episode offers practical advice for healthier digital habits and encouraging real-world engagement.  Daisy and Joe also share their ideas of smartphone alternatives that keep kids safe and connected without the risks.  If you’d like to learn more about their campaign or sign the Smartphone Free Childhood Parent Pact, check out their website for resources and connect with local WhatsApp groups to meet like-minded parents: https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/  Stay connected with Netmums for more parenting tips, community support, engaging content: Website: netmums.com / Instagram: @netmums  Series 15 of the Netmums Podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative / @decibelle_creative

You're listening to The Netmums Podcast with me, Wendy Gollich. And me, Alison Perry. Coming up on this week's show... So it's not just some like worried parents standing on our sidewalks getting upset about this, like doctors are worried about it, teachers are worried about it, politicians are worried about it. So everyone has a responsibility to try and do something about it. But before all of that... Hello, folks. Welcome to another episode of The Netmums Podcast. Now I am reliably informed by my co-host Alison that she has a very interesting story to kick off the podcast about the tooth fairy.

You're so mean. I said before we started recording, I was like, I've got quite a fun, interesting tooth fairy story. Right. Let the listeners can be the judge of how interesting my tooth fairy story is. Well, basically basically it was just a bit of a nightmare because my six-year-old twins thankfully they're both losing teeth at a similar rate because that would have been a nightmare if one was losing teeth oh it would be competitive right that i mean they're competitive over everything um but one of them lost her teeth

and i was and my husband was out um for the evening and I was racing around looking for a one pound coin could not find one for love nor money I eventually found one and I was so happy and I did what I needed to do and I slipped under her pillow and all was good and the next day my husband said to me yeah so she showed me the one pound coin you gave her or the tooth fairy gave her uh you you do realize it's one of the old one pound coins that the shops don't accept anymore don't you and i was like oh my goodness what a fail because ever since she's been saying to me she's clutching the one pound like it's her prize possession and she's saying to me can we go into the shop to spend my one pound i don't know what

what should i say like how do i make eye contact with the shopkeeper and just try and hope that like go with this and i'll pay you in a minute i'm just like or do i blame the tooth fairy do i say oh city tooth fairy she's giving you some coin that doesn't even work anymore i don't know that's what i did with the elf because the dog got hold of elf on the shelf and when he was supposed to have gone so on Christmas morning we woke up an elf on the shelf is in the dog bed so I blame the elf I just said the elf had got drunk on the brandy we left for father Christmas and not gone home I guess if I can't blame the tooth fairy if we can't blame these imaginary you know beings for our own mistakes then what is the point of them indeed

anyway it was a good story i agree please could we have the showbiz intro for our very lovely guests we can indeed at today we are joined by a couple who not only share three children but also a huge campaign which is trying to change the way that parents view smartphones. Daisy Greenwell and Joe Ryrie started Smartphone Free Childhood last year after a WhatsApp group that Daisy set up for fellow concerned parents went viral. Since then, the campaign has amassed over 200,000 online members and it's been influential in all sorts of things, including the development of the Safer Phones Bill, along with MP Josh McAllister. over 200,000 online members and it's been influential in all sorts of things including

the development of the Safer Phones Bill along with MP Josh McAllister. Daisy and Joe, welcome to the Netmums podcast. Hello. Good to be here. Thank you for joining us. So can we start by setting the scene a little bit for people who might not have heard of you or your campaign. So you're a married couple you live in Suffolk you've got three children and we're guessing that like many parents you were having conversations about smartphones how did that conversation turn into this ginormous campaign yeah it's a pretty strange turn of events in our lives so how it all started was i think it was about almost a year ago in february last year um i've been talking with doe and friends and my siblings

about this smartphone thing so when's your kid getting a smartphone and like do you want them to and you know everyone said i really don't want them to but you've got no choice you've got to do it um which felt like a little crazy situation that we were all in all in our oldest daughter was eight at the time yeah yeah and um uh an old school friend of mine Claire and I we both were in the same situation with our daughters where kids in their class were starting to get fun so we said let's start watch that group so we can support each other and try not to do it see if we can delay for a little bit because it feels so hard to do that so we set that up and then um i posted about it on social media and i don't

have any followers but it just some reason it went viral and it was started being shared all over instagram and people started joining the whatsapp group um and within 12 hours or something it was full we started another one that got full and And then, you know, within a week or so, we encouraged people, start one in your area, for your county or for your school. And then within, yeah, a few days, there was one in every county in Britain. So yeah, it was pretty wild.

We, you know, we thought that we were in the minority and worrying about it. It turns out that actually parents everywhere are really, really concerned about it. So yeah, it just felt like this little tornado had entered the kitchen of our house so joe and i very quickly realized like we either have to do this or we just don't do it and we both decided okay let's do it and we very quickly quit our jobs um and got on with it i was a journalist joe worked um doing stuff with. So we kind of had some relevant skills. And we just, yeah, went for it, basically.

In fact, we gathered all our eggs, put them in one basket, and then just tried to see what we could do with it, really. So it's been quite a dramatic change. It's an important basket, though. So if you're going to do it, then, you know, it's a great basket to put all your eggs into. Why do you think that it did escalate so so quickly so obviously this is something that a lot of us are talking about and i would say

definitely since you guys started the campaign that it's been in the news a lot for different reasons but going back a year why do you think this one simple idea mushroomed as it did i i think that there's been like a lot of pent up worry and concern from parents about it. And parents felt very disempowered, like there was nothing they could do. So I feel like it was a kind of downbursting moment where everyone was like, wow, like maybe we can actually do something about this. Maybe we can get together and sort of push back against this thing, which has just crept up on us all. None of us really chose it. We didn't vote for it. We didn't ask for it. but it's become the norm in a way that a lot of us are now starting

to question yeah i think people um as you said felt kind of resigned to this status quo if it's just kind of what you have to do even though many of us you know we've we're very lucky that our eldest daughter is hasn't got a smartphone yet but i think there's a lot of parents and probably a lot of people listening to this podcast who've sort of had to kind of reluctantly give their kids one of these devices um because all their friends have got one and we kind of found you know parents find themselves in a situation where they feel like they don't have any choice and it does feel like that a lot of the time so i think just there was as they said all this kind of pent-up frustration and emotion and people like yeah actually let we can do something about this

let's let's do that band together and change this because the pace of this technological change has been so dramatic i think one of the reasons why this campaign has resonated so um so much with so many people is that you know the people that we're speaking to you know we're in our early 40s a lot of people in the who who've got kids of similar age to us are in their 30s and 40s we all grew up without this stuff so we know that it's possible to have a childhood um where you're not carrying around a supercomputer in your pocket the whole time and and we also know as adults we've been through that journey ourselves of not living our lives through our smartphones and now we all do live our lives through our smartphones and And now we all do live our lives through our smartphones. And we probably, and a lot of us struggle

with our own relationship with our smartphone as well, ourselves included. I think everyone pretty much universally wishes they spent a bit less time on their devices. So when you then start to think about your kids being subjected to this technology, and we're not saying it's all bad, by the way, but at a very young age,

I think that's just quite a worrying thing for a lot of parents. And so, yeah, there's been this huge technological change. And we're the first generation of parents that have had to deal with this. And we're all kind of struggling and need support from one another. In all of these conversations, it can sometimes feel a bit like things are getting blurred a little bit, like smartphones and social media can be lumped together as one risk but do you think that they should be talked about separately and tweeted differently by parents and actually which carries more risk in your opinion so i suppose it's worth kind of dialing back a little bit and talking about some of the risks that are associated with um with both of these things and so you know as we've you know kind of been thrust into this space of like

learning a lot about online safety and you know the um the technical technology that underpins the um social media platforms and so on and so forth like we've realized and and read and learned that there's you know a growing body of evidence that says that smartphones and social media are like are really damaging to childhood so there's all kinds of things that parents worry about so the big one is harmful content so children are seeing things that you know we would never dream of them seeing in real life you know eight nine ten kids are seeing pornography and beheading videos and this like stuff that is just you know um totally misaligned with any of our values as parents and so a lot of parents are really worried about that stuff and even if kids aren't seeking

that stuff out it you know they're often seeing it in chat groups or friends showing to them on their computer on their phones and things so the content is one side of it um there's all kind of other safeguarding risks associated with it but even if you put that to one side i think one of the fundamental problems that um again it's almost universal amongst the parents in our community that they're worried about is the amount of time that smartphones are swallowing up for our kids uh kids daily lives um you know many kids are spending sort of five six seven eight nine hours a day on their smartphones and a big part of that is because the business model of social media platforms where most of the time is spent is specifically designed around the attention economy, it's called, it's around maximizing engagement.

So the whole business model is about how do we design platforms and we get really, really clever people people in silicon valley paid tons of money um to design platforms that create the target content at us and our kids that is most likely to keep them hooked and so that's why these two things are like intimately entwined and it's not just social media so if you have a smartphone without social media on it then and then it doesn't have made parental controls on it that a lot of parents do struggle to set up still like giving a child unrestricted access to the internet in their pocket 24 7 can lead to all sorts of risks and dangers and so the fact that the like we're not saying the internet's bad the internet of course

has all kinds of brilliant like opportunities for us all and for our kids. We say that we're not an anti-tech movement. We're a pro-childhood movement. But even just the fact that these devices are on us 24-7 the whole time, and very recently, just in the last four or five years, it's become normal to have you know 4g 5g connectivity everywhere you go so it's these kind of technological forces that have come together to get us this point where kids now have access to everything everywhere all

at once in their pockets and and and the combination of those things is is really troubling you've talked a lot though about the dangers but it isn't all bad it's not so we talk about experts and parents they believe smartphones are wholly bad but that isn't the case they can also provide connection support where do you sit on that argument that it's not all bad totally agree with that like smartphone free childhood wouldn't have started without social media or smartphones and that there are so many brilliant things about them and ways that kids can use them to learn and to connect with people um and there is a world where they could be that and more they you know there's a

world where our kids can use these things without being tied into them by algorithms without being shown really harmful content um and and that's what we want to aim for um is is a world where they can use them without it sort of trapping them um but um you know it's at the minute that's not reality and where if when your child is on a phone they will be exposed to these sorts of things which we don't want them to generally a good um way of looking at it is that you know as daisy said that of course then like smart pants aren't all bad we all love our smart pants they're so useful to all of us and despite many of us as adults kind of struggling that um but if it was black and white like these are just harmful they're

causing loads of problems then you just like throw them all in the like um in the bin in the ocean and it's like you know we're done and we can all kind of move forward and so some people compare it to smoking right and there are some comparisons to be made there but like it's smoking was obviously only bad for us all and for kids and so it makes total sense to be banned we're not calling for a ban on smartphones at all as daisy said but we really would love to get to is we want to raise awareness of this issue. We want parents everywhere to feel like they have a choice. We want parents everywhere to feel like they don't just have to,

you know, follow the crowd and follow this data quo that is damaging. But we would ultimately want to get to the point where there's much more pressure put on the tech companies to regulate these products and design them in a way that isn't just about maximizing their profits. It actually has healthy childhood development in mind. And we're not there yet. A good analogy is road safety.

So cars have transformed the way that we live, just like smartphones have transformed the way that we live. But they're also dangerous, too. The solution to that problem wasn't to ban cars from the roads. It's actually been a kind of multi-faceted approach that makes cars safer um it makes the roads safer make sure there are speed limits um there are driving tests there's education about the dangers of drink driving all that kind of stuff so this is a really really big societal systemic problem we're trying to tackle um in some sense we feel like we're mad but even giving it a go but um uh but

yeah like there's going to be the solution to this is going to be a collaboration between parents government tech companies young people um to try and make this whole situation better for us all and you talked you alluded there a little bit to the whole getting everybody on board thing and this is one of the things as a parent of a 13 year old that I find the hardest because at primary school there's a large chance that you'll know the parents in your child's class whereas at secondary school that isn't the case and getting the whole class on board is a physical impossibility because I don't know the parents I don't even know the children so how how do you get around that problem short of I guess it's a bigger question do you give your kid a phone at 13 at all is possibly the question

but I find this idea of getting the whole class on board a really daunting task as a mother of a child at secondary school. Yeah I agree that does sound like a really daunting task and I think that the main thing is you don't have to get the whole class on board. I think if your child knows that there are four or five others in their class who also don't have a phone so they're not the only one or that they have an alternative phone there's loads of good alternatives now that aren't a full-fat iphone but still have some of the things that they need to get around in the modern world so um i think and also when you look into the kind of figures about at tipping points you only need to get to 25 to 30 percent of a social group for the culture to quickly change

so I don't think you need to feel that you have to get everyone on board for it to happen but our parent pact which we launched in September is a way for parents to do that even if you're not seeing the other parents at the school gate it's a way for parents to sign up say I'm going to delay getting my child's smartphone just a few more years and wait till they're 14 and then you can see how many others in your school and class have signed up too and we've had I think 88,000 parents sign up since September so people are sharing it around and people you know it's it's sort of gone viral in its own way amongst parents who are really worried about this issue. I had a really interesting conversation with my 14 year old the other day we were talking about smartphone use around the home and um she was getting quite obsessed about it we were trying

to kind of sort of reaffirm some boundaries and get things a bit healthier and she said that she just wishes that none of her friends had smartphones you know it would almost be easier if the only reason really that she wants to use hers as much as she is is so that she doesn't feel left out and it was kind of heartbreaking because it really feels like to a certain extent these kids have had no choice in being handed a smartphone age 11 or 12 or whatever it was it's like what are we doing it's so sad isn't it I know I can't imagine doing my teenage years with with a smartphone and social media. It's already such an insecure making time, isn't it?

And to have that added element of sort of everyone watching each other online. And I think lots of young people we speak to say the same thing. They'd say, you know, it'd be better if it wasn't existent. If none of my friends had it, I wouldn't want it either. And it's just that they feel a bit trapped in having to keep up the Joneses I suppose in the teenage years of each other and what everyone's doing online so that's like you know kids are calling out for help with this issue as well and I think it's time we put some safeguards in place and and some stricter rules because they would that would be good for them it'd be good for us it'd be good for everyone. She's kind of hit the nail on the head in terms of

the problem though that's really the whole thing we're trying to do with smartphone free childhoods is bring parents together to first of all and realize that they're not alone and second of all take collective action because the idea is that if your um your daughter's got a smartphone and and um you know recognizes that the negatives as well as i'm sure some of the positives but what kind of wishes none of her friends did it's almost impossible to act alone and say no you're not having one because you know it's you know just when most kids get a smartphone when they go to secondary school the data's you know some kids get it younger some kids get older but i think the average is actually nine but or by the end of year seven 89 of kids have got their own smartphone um and that's because that's exactly the age as a parent

you really want your kids to find some more independence and meet new friends and you know it's a really important year particularly isn't it like they're going to a new school and it's so important that they meet the you know new friends and feel confident feel independent and if all their friends are on smartphone sharing stuff on tiktok and snapchat you don't want to say no you're not the one and you we're going to make you feel left out of the conversation so parents have just parents are in an impossible position that's how we describe it you either give your kid a product that you know is harmful they actually probably know it's harmful as well or you you risk alienating them from their social group exactly

that moment so it's an impossible position and that's why you know whilst we wait for government to take action and you know these platforms to become safer at the moment they're hardly regulated at all it's totally nuts really that like an 11 year old can just go on a phone and just say they're 18 and see hardcore pornography in like 10 seconds by clicking a button that is absolutely bananas um so we while we wait for something to change you know politically um we just have to work together and and if we can come together and agree to make these paths between one another and between parents then then hopefully we can find more classes and schools where that we reached that tipping point and not everybody has one and how would you recommend you redraw the boundaries if we're further you're having this conversation with what younger

children those of us who have now got 13 14 year olds who've got phones and as you said this kind of came upon parents and snuck up on us and And now we're going, oh God, right. How do I make this better? How do you redraw those boundaries without them feeling left out? I think there are definitely ways that, you know, if your child already has a smartphone, you can make it safer and make it have less of a hold over their lives. Just really basic sort of social norms that we should all have around smartphones,

not to have them at the dinner table, not to have them in our bedrooms, and to use parental controls. I think only 58% of kids have never had parental controls put on their phones, and it's complicated, and it's hard for parents to keep up with. But having rules in place like that so that kids aren't texting all night, they're not losing sleep, and they're not alone in their rooms with it what definitely helps if when your child has already got a phone yeah i mean i think you know your listeners will probably be aware of jonathan

heights um book the anxious generation was all about this subject that came out just after um our campaign launched um and he talks a lot about and there's two sides of the same coin right like he talks about we over protect children in the real world and under protect them in the online world and so it's not just about taking smartphones away from kids it's making sure that we offer them things that they're excited about and interested in and give them independence in the real world and so i think just as parents like making sure we're we're and i'm sure what everyone does is anyway but um the the risk is the smartphone becomes the most enticing and exciting thing in their life because it's basically designed to be exactly that engineered by some of the brightest people in the world to be uh incredibly addictive and

alluring so just trying to make sure that they have they're engaged in real world activities and real worldworld communities. You know, we've got lots of friends of ours. We talk about this constantly. And so we're lucky that our children don't have smartphones yet, but lots of our friends do. And they talk about how, you know, one of our friend's son's really into football,

and that means that he's not actually that bothered about his smartphone because all he thinks about is football and going to play football with his mates, as an example. So, yeah, I think it's just that thing i'm trying to make sure that even though um you know we we know like 89% of sober year seven kids have got smartphones as parents of those children like how can we just make sure that it's not the number one thing as a parent also wendy i would just add to that as someone who has redrawn the boundaries um quite recently just being a badass hardcore parent and just like you know i have my i have my 14 year old sitting on the sofa next to me crying and saying you know i don't want to be

left out and my friendships blah blah blah um i said to her well you know you your friendships are really important but it's not the be all and end all. It's not, we will not base our parenting decisions on what will make you popular with your friends, which is really hard to say when you've got, you know, a child crying, but you've got to do it. So, Jo, what would you say is, whose responsibility is it in terms of teaching our kids about smartphone use and online safety? You know, should we be adding digital literacy into the primary school curriculum? You know,

should all secondary schools ban phones? Or actually, do schools have enough to deal with already and they're already being pushed as far as they can go? Or like you've spoken already about the tech giants you know how much of it is their responsibility or is it a mixture of all three anyone who's got like a stake in the future of our children whether that's as a parent as a teacher as a government or as a tech company who's marketing the products of children it stands to reason that we we all need to try and do something about this but of course the like as i just touched on already it's the tech companies that ultimately are the

ones profiting from getting our children like addicted to their devices and platforms and so we do think that um really the the ultimate responsibility like does lie on them to make sure that platforms are safe and they're not they're non-addictive but that's not to say that it's not like up to us as parents to um educate ourselves and to talk to to um you know educate our kids about the dangers of these things and the risks of these things and the opportunity of these things as well so um parents we i think we would definitely encourage anyone who's listening and interested in this debate to um you know go on our website we've got quite a lot of resources on there

and just educate yourself as much as possible about this situation i think one of the things that we realize is that there's some i think it was david attenborough he said um that climate change is a communications challenge we feel similar about this campaign like when people actually stop and think about the underlying dynamics of the and market forces that have got us into this position almost everyone's like yeah that's kind of crazy that the most powerful companies in the world are profiting from getting 11 12 13 year olds addicted to dangerous products so that's absolutely crazy um so the in in the end we need to do something about that but right now um we all have a you know like i said the best thing that we think we can do as parents is to educate ourselves have good conversations about

it with with our communities and hopefully make packs to delay giving our kids smartphones and in terms of schools like you know we really do think this is a like one of the defining issues of of um you know of our time um and i i know you had rangan chatterjee on your podcast a while back and he was both him a couple of weeks ago and he said that he thinks this is the most urgent public health crisis of our time so it's not just some like worried parents standing on our sideboards getting upset about this like doctors are worried about it teachers are worried about it politicians are worried about it so everyone has a responsibility to try and do something about it and in terms of the school thing

um yeah there should definitely be like more education around like what's actually going on like why are you spending so much time on snapchat why he's like um you know who's profiting from that and why i think kids are really open to that message as well um and understanding that um and you know it sort of stands it kind of seems crazy to us that smartphones are allowed in any school context like kids being on allowed to have their phones on them in a math lesson looking at social media i know not many schools actually allow that but you know we do hear lots of stories that there are lots of schools that um that do um you know think of some of the things that have been banned from from schools i remember when we were kids

it's like tamagotchis fidget spinners all this kind of stuff right and and then you've got these like most you know a supercomputer that had has more processing power than apollo 13 children carry them around their pockets and that's allowed, but that just seems crazy. So we feel like schools, purely in terms of educational benefits, smartphones shouldn't be in the classroom. In terms of children being able to learn to socialise, we don't think smartphones should be allowed during the school day

and kids should be talking to one another and socialising and not sharing clips on social media at break time but also we think as importantly schools have a really important part to play in this because they have such influence over parents and over young people and yeah we're trying we're talking to lots of schools as well and and trying to help them use their influence to change this because most teachers are really really worried about this in fact teachers have been hanging on about this for ages because they've seen how the change in the last five or ten years um and how distracted kids are and yeah all kinds of all the problems that we've already talked about teachers understand them the distraction lack of

sleep and kids not being able to focus and a lot of those they tie back to this exact issue so let's talk about some solutions a little bit we've seen australia ban social media for under 16 so is i'm assuming that's something you'd like to see happening here as well but do you think it's a better solution to ban the social media or the smartphone or neither well we don't we don't really want anything to be banned actually but you know in an ideal world the sort of utopian vision is that children have um age appropriate access to um technology and that children are able to take advantage of the benefits that technology provide without the um all these really significant consequences but we're so far away from that at the moment partly because of the sort of dynamics of the the industry the social media

and giants that we described that we would say that whilst you know we we're not we're definitely not calling for a ban on smartphones but in terms of social media people say there's not enough evidence to be able to restrict social media um or raise the age limits on social media but there was no evidence whatsoever that the platforms were safe or these were a good idea like this product just came into our world it um it proliferated incredibly quickly and we just got to the situation where it's like childhood is being um you know fundamentally transformed by these platforms but no one um uh you know no one asked for any evidence or proof that this was a good idea so we would say until the tech companies can prove that their products are not only safe for kids but they're

non-addictive for kids and they're actually um you know contribute to healthy childhood development then it does make sense to raise the age limit when kids can access them it's gonna you know the online safety app comes into play this year that's gonna mean it's complicated but basically the platforms have to enforce their age limit which means it's going to be illegal for them to allow children under 13 on their platforms anyway so we would say raising that to 16 does make sense whilst we're in a situation where um you know the harms are really significantly outweighing the benefits here and we'd love to get to a point where that's not the case and the benefits outweigh the harms are really significantly outweighing the benefits here. And we'd love to get to a point where that's not the case and the benefits outweigh the harms

and children can have an age-appropriate relationship and non-addictive relationship with technology. There's such a strong link between offline real-world safety and smartphones. I mean, most parents i know the only reason that we've given our 11 year olds a phone a smartphone is because they're heading off to secondary school they're getting on buses or public transport by themselves and you want to be able to have them call you or in my case and in many people's cases track track them on an app. How do we tackle that? So if we do stop giving our kids smartphones as young as we are,

how do we give parents peace of mind and also kids peace of mind that they are safe? Yeah, I mean, that's really understandable. It's nerve wracking to put your child on a bus and waving goodbye. So the really good thing is that there are alternatives that aren't smartphones um that still give you the ability to keep in touch to call and text and there are better and better options coming on the market all the time um so and and smart watches you can gps your child and keep in touch with them but you don't have risks that come with social media and an open internet browser and And there are new products coming onto the market this year. Nokia is producing a better

phone, the Better Phone Project, and they've asked parents, what do you want? And that will be coming out this year. Explorer and the smartwatch company for kids are also bringing out a smartish phone. I think what parents want is some of the modern things like maps and music without the harmful things such as you know tiktok or porn so it's definitely a gap in the market that we're hoping that more and more manufacturers will recognize that there's such demand for parents for something that's sort of in between the two but it's not a sort of you know um 20 year old nokia brick phone but it's also not an iphone 14 um and so we you know, 20-year-old Nokia brick phone, but it's also not an iPhone 14. And so, you know, there are some products that kind of fit the bill at the moment out there.

There's more and more good, like, brick phone, dumb phone, simple phone. We never quite know what to call them, options on the market already, but we're pretty confident in the next year or so there's going to be a lot more kind of hybrid options that make this a lot easier for parents we've got quite a few on our website we've got a list of alternatives that parents can use um which would recommend people looking at if

they're thinking of taking that taking that route and how much of a risk is there of scaremongering around this the documentary on channel four swip was criticised for saying children are losing their grey matter in a similar way to people with substance abuse. Yet the studies don't back that claim up. And there is a grey area here that everybody is jumping brilliantly on the bandwagon that is we need to do something about this. But what about that risk of scare mongering well the swipe documentary was um i think it was the university of york that was involved in the research around that so i haven't actually heard that criticism but and you're right that it can get it's a controversial topic and one thing that we're really really trying not to do um in any of our kind of communications with

the way we talk about this is scared parents unnecessarily like we're just saying that we need to have a conversation about this whether you've given your child a smartphone or you haven't um like i said we're all trying to do our best in this new frontier of parenting that none of us had to deal with and so like but it's also really complicated because as soon as you start um you know judging anyone other someone else's parenting then like the conversation's over like we're not doing that we we're like everyone is is is trying their hardest to deal with this really really complicated situation um and yeah we also think it's really important to look at the evidence out there that is like does um prove beyond doubt that there are significant harms that are associated with the um with giving kids

smartphones really really young and again we're not saying that smartphones are inherently bad all we're really calling for is as a like whilst we wait for the products to get safer and the platforms to get safer just the simplest thing to do collectively is to wait for a few more years and so we're really hoping that that message is not something that is is confrontational we're not trying to like fearmonger or scaremonger anyone into changing their their approach but it's just so important that we have an informed conversation about this topic because it matters so much i think that's why this movement's taken off um because so many people realize that these like um the consequences of this shift are really profound and they they matter to us as parents they matter to us like to our kids there's one statistic i always it really like always sticks in my mind.

There was a survey done of 10,000 parents globally, which said that 33% of those parents who had given their kids smartphones had cried over their kids' phone obsession. So that is such a shocking statistic. Like a third of parents, it's such a big deal, that a third of parents have brought tears over it. So whether or not there's academic debate about causation and correlation and all these kind of complicated academic conversations that go on like that kind of data just tells you how much this is this matters to parents in like homes across the country in

the world and it's pretty irrefutable so that's why we we think it's it's so important that we we change something and on that point about it being across the world when we started it we thought this might just you know give you just a thing that parents in england are worried about but we've also since since it started we encouraged anyone who got in touch from abroad which was a lot of people to start in their country so we've now got smartphone free childhood to 30 countries across the world from Nigeria to Costa Rica to Brazil you know it's it's this is a universal thing that parents are waking up to everywhere and it's and it's you know it's a really positive story of like parents rising up to say okay this is enough we want more control over our children's childhoods and you know big tech you need to to take note and start fixing your products so that we can let our children use them without concern.

Yeah, I am one of those parents who has been thinking about it a lot in the last year or so. But thinking about it all has made me realize how addicted I am to scrolling. And so one of the changes that I've made recently is implementing a scrolling ban in my home, which is, you know know what my 14 year old was very unhappy about so whenever myself my husband or my teenager are at home our phones have to stay in the kitchen plugged in by the charging point um which seems to be you know helping a lot in this home um but who do you think has worse digital literacy the kids or the adults um that's a really good question i for christmas i bought joe one of these like phone lock boxes so so that we could try and do smartphone free sundays and we'll put our phones in there and just not pick them up it's so hard to do isn't it because you know you're just like oh i need to do a bit of shopping or i need to like book a bus ticket or whatever um yeah so

i mean that's that's important point to make is that we have really like we have to run our lives through these as adults and like you know we have to do all the school in emails and all that stuff we have to do it whereas children don't have to um so i don't think we should berate ourselves so hard for you know let ourselves off the hook a little bit for our scrolling because that's why i've made a scrolling ban because i still think that all three of us in this home should be allowed to use our phones for something useful if we need to send that message or look up a bus timetable or whatever it is but we I want to stop us just sitting there on the sofa scroll scroll scroll that's that's bad thing mine broke

just before Christmas and I realized I couldn't put money on my daughter's lunch she there's a fingerprint she fingerprints to get her lunch like her balance so I couldn't put money on my daughter's lunch. She, there's a fingerprint. She fingerprints to get her lunch, like her balance. So I couldn't give her lunch and I couldn't pay my, I couldn't access my bank because I've, and suddenly it's this like creeping fear that actually my life falls apart if this thing is gone. So I think you're really right with the scrolling ban. It's not the use of the phone.

It's the mindless use of the phone. That's the really big problem for me as a grown-up anyway yeah you're totally right but also it's so hard not to like remember these we've talked a bit about the business model in relation to kids but also for us all like these products are precision engineered to just hook us in just to that moment and then you're and then you're in because they're serving you exactly what they know you need and know you want at any given moment. So it's really, really hard not to do it. It's like in that film, Inside Out, the first one, where they do a little, I don't know if you've seen it,

but they do a scene in the film where all of the little things in her brain are trying to keep her concentrating on the thing that they want her to be concentrating on. And that's exactly what the algorithms do to all of us the good thing is have you noticed that the less you use it the less you want to use it and the more you use it the more you do want to use it so yeah i think the scrolling band's a great idea because suddenly it just you just sort of unhook yourself from it and you suddenly start to realize actually it's kind of boring why would i want to just stare at everyone's pictures it's just i'd much rather go 100 cook a cake or

whatever it is you want to do yeah i think it's going to be a big a big you know it's not just what we're doing um and that's going to um you know in this space that's going to be a big like story it's not just kids i think that we're reaching this time um and particularly because ai is about to come around the corner and we're all kind of slightly terrified of what that's going to mean as well but i think there's a growing recognition that um whilst of course there's extraordinary advantages and potential for like this this computing power to be carried around their buckets the whole time and and and how brilliantly useful they are and they streamline our lives in so many ways i think everyone's starting to realize hang on a

minute like what's actually happening here uh and and we're hoping there'll be a broader movement um as well in the coming years that people are saying actually let's reclaim a bit more of our humanity and not spend all our lives like staring at a screen being exploited by these firms in silicon valley yeah absolutely um so finally if someone is listening and wants to sign up to your pledge and find out more how do they go about it well if they google um smartphone free childhood parent pact it will come up it's on our website um and yeah go you can log on see see where you'll find your school find your county and see how many others have signed in your area it's quite fun people quite enjoy like you can select your county and then you can

see a leaderboard of which schools in your county have signed the most pats so people quite enjoy nosing around that um so yeah if you google smartphone free childhoods you'll find it um you can also dig around on our website for the sort of resources and um we're about to relaunch that so there's going to be loads of more um content and useful stuff for parents around this issue in a month or two's time and ironically as well you can follow us on instagram because we're building quite a big following on instagram to kind of fight fire with fire i think what i find really helpful actually within all of it is that you can join a whatsapp group specifically for

your school and then have conversations with like-minded parents who have kids at your school so that it feels like you can all decide right you you email the head teacher right i've done this you do that and you don't feel like you are doing it all on your own so that is a super helpful feature i find yes right we should have mentioned that like that's such a crisp part of this as well like um on the website, you can find a link to your local WhatsApp groups. It's all organized by county. So you can go in and select your county,

join the county level WhatsApp group. And underneath those WhatsApp groups, you'll probably find your school's WhatsApp group as well, where you can connect with local parents. So yeah, we're trying to provide like, you know, solidarity between parents is such a huge part of this and and yeah hopefully most of your listeners will be able to find the whatsapp

group close to them yeah and if there isn't one in your school you can start one um and then invite other parents to join although then there is the danger it's another bloody whatsapp boops and on that note guys thank you so much you have given us lots to think about lots of food for thought and we're thrilled that you joined us thank you very much thank you don't forget you can get in touch with us on all social channels instagram facebook tiktok just type in netmoms and you'll find us and if you liked what you've heard today we'd love for you to give us a five-star rating press the follow button and share the podcast on all your socials.