Parents take charge as UK government decides against banning smartphones in schools.

Daisy Greenwell has long felt that the idea of letting her eldest son do something inevitable. But until early last year, when her daughter was eight, it filled her with fear. When she spoke to other parents, “Everyone said, ‘Yes, that’s a nightmare, but there’s no choice,'” recalls Greenwell, 41.

She decided to test it. My friend Claire Fergnou shared concerns about the impact of social media on the addictive quality of smartphones and mental health, so I created a WhatsApp group to help develop a strategy. Then Greenwell lives in Suffolk, a countryside in eastern England; I posted her thoughts on Instagram.

“If we could switch social norms like giving your child a smartphone at 11am in our school, our town, our country, we could do it, like giving your child a smartphone at 11am,” she wrote. “What if they could hold off until they were 14 or 16?” she added a link to the WhatsApp group.

The post has gone viral. Within 24 hours, the group was oversubscribed for parents to participate. Today, more than 124,000 parents of children in UK schools have signature A pact created by the free childhood of smartphones, a charity founded by Greenwell, her husband Joe Riley and Ferniev. “I will act in the best interests of my kids and our community and wait until I get my smartphone until the end of my ninth year.” (The ninth year is equivalent to the eighth graders in America.)

Movement aligns with a A broader change in British attitudesmounts of harm caused by smartphone addiction and algorithm-driven social media as evidence. 1 investigation Last year, the majority of respondents (69%) felt that social media had negatively affected children under the age of 15.

Meanwhile, with the police Intelligence Services We warned about extreme and violent content torrents reaching children online. This is a trend that was examined during adolescence of hit television shows, where school men are accused of murder after being exposed to online misogyny. It’s become British Most of them were seen Show, and on Monday, Prime Minister Kiel Starmer met. The creator and I told her I had seen it on Downing Street with my son and daughter. But he also said, “This is not a challenge politicians can simply legislate.”