What the Tech: Greystones: The impact
Three years ago, parents in Greystones, Ireland, made a bold decision. Together with local schools, they agreed to hold off on giving their children smartphones until secondary school, what Americans call seventh grade, around age 13. The idea was simple. If parents stood together, kids would not feel left out, and families could delay some of the challenges that come with handing a child a connected device.
Now, the first group of kids raised under the pact is reaching secondary school. Teachers and chaplains in Greystones say the results are hard to ignore.
At Temple Carrig Secondary School, chaplain Josh Barrington says smartphones have changed student behavior in ways few adults saw coming. “The more they’re on the screen, the less they sleep,” he explained. “And the less they sleep, the more we have mental health problems.” He points to 2008, the year the first iPhone was released, as a turning point. Since then, rates of anxiety and stress among students have climbed. “I don’t think it’s a debate anymore,” he said. “It used to be people questioning; now you cannot have the argument.”
Secondary school teacher Susan Kyne Andrews sees the difference every day in her classroom. “They are far more creative, far more childlike, and full of wonder and curiosity,” she said of the students whose parents waited to give them phones. She describes those students as engaged in books and face-to-face friendships, while many of their peers are more focused on online trends, memes, and “silly stuff.” The gap, she says, is striking. “Some of the others were clued in to trends and memes, while these kids were still reading books and being normal kids.” She says many of these phone-free students also exhibit a kind of self-awareness about technology that their peers lack. Some do not want to end up like older siblings who feel consumed by their devices.
Primary school teacher Alizia Gisler says the differences were noticeable long before students reached secondary school. “When the phones started coming in, kids were already tired and not able to focus; they’d been on the phones before school,” she recalled. Late nights, early mornings, and endless scrolling left many of her students struggling in class. But once parents in Greystones collectively agreed to wait, things began to change. “Oh, absolutely, grades improved,” Gisler said. “They were tired before, and the phone was their main focus instead of their schoolwork.”
When the It Takes a Village initiative launched, it was common to see children as young as nine with smartphones, and the age was trending even younger. Today, the opposite is true. Three years into the pact, more children are voluntarily waiting until well after they enter secondary school to go online with a smartphone.
For teachers and parents in Greystones, the experiment is proving that kids without phones are not missing out. In fact, many are gaining something far more valuable: time to be kids a little while longer.
