2023-06-06 18:08:49
This is the dream shared by many parents: to no longer see their children glued to their phones all day. And the town of Greystones, south of Dublin, has taken action. The parents’ associations of the eight primary schools in this town of 20,000 inhabitants adopted last month the “Greystones Pact”, a pact to ban smartphones from children before they enter secondary school (around 12/13 years old). .
The parents have agreed, voluntarily, without constraint, not to provide telephones to their children. “If everyone does it, you don’t feel like you’re a special case. It’s so much easier to say no,” explains au Guardian Laura Bourne, one of whose children is in small section: “The longer we can preserve their innocence, the better it will be”.
Soon a “national recommendation”?
The ‘Greystones Pact’ was originally born out of children’s heightened anxiety over Covid and cell phone use, according to Rachel Harper, principal of Saint Patrick’s School at the forefront of the project. After interviewing parents, the eight schools in the city created this initiative.
An initiative that goes much further than this small coastal town south of the Irish capital since it has attracted the attention of the government and more particularly of the Minister of Health Stephen Donnelly. “Ireland can and must be a global leader in ensuring that children and young people are not targeted and harmed by their interactions with the digital world,” the Minister wrote in a platform for The Irish Times.
“We need to make it easier for parents to limit the content their children are exposed to,” he added, indicating that he was considering putting in place a “nationwide recommendation” based on the example of Greystones.
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