Only 3% of UK 12-year-olds don’t have a smartphone. Here is how four of them feel about it

By Free Republic | Created at 2024-09-23 14:48:43 | Updated at 2024-09-30 13:23:02 6 days ago

Only 3% of UK 12-year-olds don’t have a smartphone. Here is how four of them feel about it
The Guardian ^ | 23rd September 2024 | Amy Fleming

Posted on 09/23/2024 7:45:25 AM PDT by Cronos

two concerned parents created the group Smartphone Free Childhood.

what do the pioneering minority of smartphone-free children make of all this?

Annabel, 13 I’m the only person I know who doesn’t have a smartphone. I know they’re quite addictive. Some of my friends are on Snapchat a lot – one of them has 3hr screen-time limit on her phone and she uses up the whole thing with Snapchat. Some of my other friends, when we’re together, scroll on TikTok or YouTube, and I feel quite left out.

Sometimes my friends communicate with people they haven’t met before from a different school, so I think social media is a good way of finding people. But it also has negatives, because you can come into contact with people you don’t want to speak with, although I don’t know anyone who has been bullied online. If there’s a person they don’t know, they usually block them.

One of the positives is that I’m more connected to my friends in the real world, I’m on some WhatsApp groups on my mum’sphone, which helps me connect with, say, the class group chat.

I do feel like having a smartphone would distract me from other things.

Henry, 11 I got a smartphone when I turned 11 and then my mum took it away, because she said my attitude got a lot worse when I’d been looking at it and it caused arguments. She’d tell me to stop and then I wouldn’t stop, because I wanted to complete this level of a game, or finish talking to my friends.

Mikey, 11 I haven’t got a smartphone, because my parents think there are too many dangers. I don’t knowwhat they are; they won’t tell me. I think they should at least tell me what the dangers are.

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...

TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: smartphone; uk

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Thank you very much and God bless you.

I think smartphones should be banned for under 18s.

You need to be 18 to drink or smoke, and smartphones are addictive too

1 posted on 09/23/2024 7:45:25 AM PDT by Cronos

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