Reader’s opinion|In addition to stricter age limits on social media and cell phone-free school days, we need lines created together by parents and educators.
Finn a child typically gets his own smartphone already in elementary school and may spend several hours a day in front of the screen in his free time.
Smartphones and especially the applications popular with children have become more and more captivating, while the research evidence of their long-term harm has been strengthened. Many parents are aware of the disadvantages, but powerless to oppose the norm. Therefore, changing the norm would require a collective decision.
In Britain and Ireland, regional authorities have made coordinated agreements where parents agree not to buy smartphones for their children during primary school or before a certain age (ranging from 12 to 16).
Helsingin Sanomat also reported (31.5.) about parents from Helsinki who agree with each other about their children not having smartphones when they enter the first grade.
The advantage of collective bargaining is, first of all, that it is easier to postpone the purchase of a smartphone. Without a contract, views on the appropriate age to get a smartphone for a child are more susceptible to appeals by children and manipulation by operators (HS 15.5.).
When smart devices start to appear in the circle of friends, the fear of being an outsider accelerates the purchase of devices even in families that are aware of the disadvantages. This creates a collective trap: the cost of missing out is high for an individual child, but everyone would benefit if no one had a smart device.
Second, collective bargaining reduces children’s exposure to other people’s smartphones. A few smart devices can change the entire peer group’s perception of social and physical stimuli in the environment.
The devices gather children around them, so those who look at the smartphone from behind the actual user’s shoulder are also exposed to the content. It is common for a child of primary school age to have seen porn and violence on someone else’s phone.
In addition to possible tightening of social media age limits and cell phone-free school days, we need lines created together by parents and educators. They would affect the children’s growth environment more quickly and would set limits outside of school days as well. In this way, we would get rid of the collective trap where children are bought smartphones “because others have them too”.
Kristiina Tammisalo
Doctor of Political Science, Helsinki
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