Parents in Greystones, Ireland, have implemented a voluntary ban on smartphones for primary school-aged children. The ban, which has gained support nationally, aims to reduce anxiety and exposure to inappropriate content. Parents’ associations in the area’s primary schools can choose to participate in the ban, which applies both at school and at home. The ban has been implemented to preserve children’s innocence and prolong childhood. The health minister of Ireland has expressed support for the ban and emphasized the need to protect children from harm in the digital world. Concerns about the impact of smartphone usage on children’s development have been increasing, with studies suggesting potential negative effects on cognitive skills. Similar smartphone bans have been implemented in other places, such as a town in India that prohibits smartphone usage for individuals under 18.
Children’s phone use is such a tragedy of the commons type thing. Most parents I speak to agree that they don’t want their kid on a smartphone, but they have to let theirs have one or they’ll be bullied as the one kid in town who doesn’t. The only way round this is collective action. Good for Greystones. All the best to them!
One of the biggest jokes on the internet is the phrase with which every PP begins “Your privacy is very important to us” to be given later it counts in the rest of the text, which few read, which should be understood in an ironic way. In other words, your data is important to them, because they traffic with it and use the most shabby tricks to get it (FloC, iddle, pixel tracker, key and mousemove logger, fingerprintings, email tracking, URL ads, clickbaits, script to anulate adblockers. redirects, etc).
