Do you think children should be allowed to have their own smartphones?
One mum from Ramsey says she wants to start a conversation about them.
Meghan Kennish has two children and is worried about the potential harm it can cause when you have access to a smartphone from a young age.
She's been telling Amy Griffiths why:
Hi there, I'm Amy Griffiths and I'm one of the journalists in Monks Radio's Newsroom. And on this episode of Newscast, we're asking whether you think children should be allowed to have their own smartphones. One woman, Ramsay, says she wants to start a conversation about them. Megan Kennish has two children and is worried about the potential harm it can cause when you have access to a smartphone from a young age. She's been telling me why. I am starting this discussion. I think it started purely selfish to be honest because I wanted to find other people that I knew that felt the same as me about children having access to smartphones because it's not a conversation that you can strike up in the playground because you've only got 10 minutes. It's not something that you want to bring up when you're having dinner with your friends because you want to talk about something that's not your children. But for ages, something that's been keeping me up at night is my children having access to smartphones and everything that comes with that. And I just wanted to find people who felt the same as me because I feel so alone, which means other people must feel alone. But together, we can actually make a difference and support each other and share ideas, ask questions. So that's why I'm here today, really, to get that conversation going. Just talk me through what some of those concerns that you have are. I think, well, there's a lot and it's personal to everybody. But most of mine come down to my child's development, my child's sense of self. I want them to know what they love to do in real life before they fall in love with a screen. I want them to decide what they think is beautiful before they are of hell to beauty standards. I want them to be bored so they can be imaginative. I want them to play outside. I want them to be able to process their emotions with me before broadcasting them online. And I suppose if you flip that, I don't want them to see things that they can't unsee. And I don't want them to have access to the 24 hours and news cycle before they can process that properly. And I don't want them critically to be dependent. Smartphones do seem to be so ingrained in our daily lives these days. And they can be hard to escape. And is it fair, I suppose, to ask children to have to give that up when saying their friends are playing on their smartphones and talking to each other on their smartphones and they're missing out from those conversations? Instead of asking, is it fair for them to have that taken away? I would ask, is it fair to give it to them in the first instance? And I think this is really the crooks of why I'm here is that if we all decide to take this action together, then that question of, will they be the only one? Won't be a question anymore? Because, well, I won't say none of them because that's, I think that's quite unrealistic. But the majority of children, hopefully, their parents would have made the decision to not give them a smartphone. It's all well and good asking for people's faith, but actually, would you like to see this become government policy and be some legislation that is going through Tim Wood, for example, to that effect? Again, another really big question, which I personally don't feel completely qualified to answer. I am no expert on smartphones, I don't have all the stats to demonstrate what effects they're having on our children, and I don't have the experience to comment on whether legislation is likely realistic or not. But I think, to me, this is a three tiered approach, the first approach is collective action, so parents, like, let's get together and do it. Second, I think there is a need for schools to have an outright ban on smartphones, both primary and secondary. But again, I don't work in a school environment, I can't comment on that myself, but what I've heard anecdotally is that that would just transform the education of our children on the Isle of Man. And I suppose the last tier would be to legislate, I don't think it's impossible, I don't really know what that legislation would look like, whether it would be a ban on smartphones under a certain age, a ban on social media under a certain age, or whether you legislate a ban in schools. I'm not too sure. I think that is a need for something to come from government, but I think that conversation needs to be had by experts, and not by me who's just trying to raise awareness and find comrades for one of a better word. But is that a conversation that you'd be willing to have with your local M.H.A. in the first instance, for example then, just to try and get that conversation to a wider audience potentially. Yeah, I would 100% be willing to have the conversation with my M.H.A. and I know, and I've spoken to parents who have had these conversations with that M.H.A. is. Again, I wasn't in the room, so I can't comment on what happened, but no progress has been made. So I would assume that those conversations weren't productive from what I have seen. The conversation isn't being had in Tin World, which would make me think that M.H.K.s haven't thought it a big enough issue to take it that far up the chain. But there are parents willing and ready to take action. Again, we don't know what that looks like yet, but hopefully we will do at the end of this week when we've managed to meet, which we are going to do. But there is a need for this conversation, and I think this is the time, and there's a movement sweeping across the world, and the UK, which has come from Jonathan Hates' new book called The Anxious Generation, which calls parents to take collective action, which is what I'm trying to do to shout up and say, "I feel like this. You might feel like this. Let's take action together." So I think now is the time, and I believe that the Isle of Man is a small enough jurisdiction to be nimble as we demonstrated by passing big bills, and the passing big bills are going through. We have the potential to make great change on our island, and our parliament and our population is equipped to make those changes quickly and efficiently too. So why not be ahead of the game? And I suppose the counter-argument is that because smartphones are advancing so much now, you can actually put restrictions on things, so you can restrict either the apps that your child is using, or how long they're using them for, and things like that. Do you not think that goes far enough? Yeah, absolutely those restrictions are great, and I would encourage parents to use them if they don't already, but I think, and I'll be the first to admit, that I think it would only take a quick Google from a teenager to say how to get around parenting restrictions, and they're probably to give teenagers their geo tech savvy enough to figure that out themselves. I wouldn't say it's completely watertight approach, but I'm not at all against it. It's a really, really good step in the right direction. So you're hoping to get more people talking about this, and committing to doing this. How exactly are you doing that? First, I bit the bullet and wrote down my feelings, and recorded it on a video, which was toe curling and awful to do, because there's nothing worse than seeing yourself on camera, and hearing your own voice. And I sent it to the parents of my children's class, and it got a positive response, and there has actually been no negative responses to my face that I've seen anyway. And so I thought, okay, that's the hardest bit done. You've spoke about it, you've kind of stuck in a cup, and you've done the hardest bit. So then I posted it a bit wider, and made a Facebook group, so those who felt the same as me can get together, and I made WhatsApp conversations too. I'm not naive to the irony of this conversation happening online. Like, I am very much aware, but I do have to admit that in this day and age, the most efficient way of building community is online, so I've just had to embrace that, and to react to Facebook, and do all the things you have to do. And I just want parents to know that they're not alone. I feel like this. I know at least 250 other parents feel like this, because they've joined this group, and they're on the WhatsApp chats. Chances are, they'll be a handful of other parents in your child's class who feels the same, and you just need to know who they are, because then you can support each other, and you can bounce ideas off each other, and have a bit of community around the subject too. I just want people to know that I am not at all judging them on their parenting. No judgement at all. I am just trying to find people who feel like me, and there will be people who don't feel like me, and that is absolutely fine, but for those who do, like now is the time, so join in the conversation, and we have the potential to make real, real change. I know that the easy thing to do is to give your child a smartphone, but if anything comes from this conversation, it's just that I want to urge parents to pause, and just reconsider it for a second, and that can make a huge difference to your child's potential. The argument as well is that you're not saying that they shouldn't have a phone full stop, just not one that has all of the capabilities that a smartphone has. Yeah, I think that's key as well, like I, and the other parents who feel like this, we're not against technology. Technology is fabulous, and I think our children absolutely need to be technology literate, because that's just the future, isn't it? They need to have access to technology, they need to learn how to use technology. I give my child my smartphone so they can, for example, when we go away, have a look at what train we need to get. I just think that having a device in your hand in which you can access both the best and the worst of the world is not helping our children at all. And again, I think it comes back to the safety conversation where a strong argument for smartphones, which I think is flawed, is, well, we want our children to have a life outside of their home, and we want them to be safe when they go outside and play, so we need to give them a smartphone, and my answer to that would be no. You don't need to use them as smartphones. You can give them a phone that can just make calls and texts, and that does the job, doesn't it? And I think a lot of the time we're too overprotective in the physical world, and very underprotective of our children on the online world, which has alarming rates of children being susceptible to so many things which we don't have to get into now. And I think my final words would be don't give any device or app or company permission to steal your child's precious attention, because with that attention goes their time, their creativity, their passions, and maybe even their potential. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manxeradian newscast. You are obviously someone with exquisite taste. May I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manxeradia podcasts at your favourite podcast provider, so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone. Thank you. (upbeat music) You
