The adverse effects on children’s mental health are well known, and pre-teens are too young to safely navigate the internet
But everyone has one,” pleads my son as his father and I tell him, for the umpteenth time, that no, he will not get a smartphone. Not now and probably not for a few more years. Despite our firm resolve, it is hard not to feel sorry for him. As the end of year 6 draws closer, the weeks are peppered with stories of new classmates whose parents have, as one friend texted recently, “cracked”. WhatsApp groups are springing up so that friends going to different secondaries can easily keep in touch. It is a world of interaction he will remain ignorant of, but, much though it pains me to see the turmoil it causes, I feel vindicated each time I read about the detrimental impact that smartphones are having on children.
One report published earlier this year from the children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, revealed that nearly a third of young people will have viewed pornography by the age of 11. Such content, De Souza clarifies, will not be the equivalent of “top-shelf” material some parents may have viewed in their youth and which today would be considered quaint. It is material in which “depictions of degradation, sexual coercion, aggression and exploitation are commonplace, and disproportionately targeted against teenage girls”.
Lola Okolosie is an English teacher and writer focusing on race, politics, education and feminism
