The idea of getting her eldest child a smartphone had long felt inevitable, said Daisy Greenwell. But by early last year, when her daughter was 8 years old, it filled her with dread. When she talked to other parents, “everyone universally said, ‘Yes, it’s a nightmare, but you’ve got no choice,’” recalled Ms. Greenwell, 41.
She decided to test that. A friend, Clare Fernyhough, had shared her concerns about the addictive qualities of smartphones and the impact of social media on mental health, so they created a WhatsApp group to strategize. Then Ms. Greenwell, who lives in rural Suffolk, in the east of England, posted her thoughts on Instagram.
“What if we could switch the social norm so that in our school, our town, our country, it was an odd choice to make to give your child a smartphone at 11,” she wrote. “What if we could hold off until they’re 14, or 16?” She added a link to the WhatsApp group.
The post went viral. Within 24 hours the group was oversubscribed with parents clamoring to join. Today, more than 124,000 parents of children in more than 13,000 British schools have signed a pact created by Smartphone Free Childhood, the charity set up by Ms. Greenwell, her husband, Joe Ryrie, and Ms. Fernyhough. It reads: “Acting in the best interests of my child and our community, I will wait until at least the end of Year 9 before getting them a smartphone.” (Year 9 is equivalent to the American eighth grade.)
The movement aligns with a broader shift in attitudes in Britain, as evidence mounts of the harms posed to developing brains by smartphone addiction and algorithm-powered social media. In one survey last year the majority of respondents — 69 percent — felt social media negatively affected children under 15. Nearly half of parents said they struggled to limit the time children spent on phones.
Meanwhile the police and intelligence services have warned of a torrent of extreme and violent content reaching children online, a trend examined in the hit TV show Adolescence, in which a schoolboy is accused of murder after being exposed to online misogyny. It became Britain’s most watched show, and on Monday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with its creators in Downing Street, telling them he had watched it with his son and daughter. But he also said: “This isn’t a challenge politicians can simply legislate for.”
Other governments in Europe have acted to curb children’s smartphone use. In February, Denmark announced plans to ban smartphones in schools, while France barred smartphones in elementary schools in 2018. Norway plans to enforce a minimum age on social media.
So far Britain’s government has appeared wary of intervening. Josh MacAlister, a Labour lawmaker, attempted to introduce a legal requirement to make all schools in England smartphone free. But the bill was watered down after the government made clear it would not support a ban, arguing that principals should make the decision.
Some parents feel the need to act is urgent, especially as technology companies, including Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and X, formerly Twitter, have ended fact-checking operations, which many experts say will allow misinformation and hate speech to flourish.
“We don’t have years for things to change,” said Vicky Allen, 46, a mother from Henfield in southern England. “It does feel like it needs to be us.”
She and a friend, Julia Cassidy, 46, successfully campaigned for their children’s elementary school to limit phone use after Ms. Cassidy watched a Channel 4 documentary about smartphones in schools, and then came across Smartphone Free Childhood. Ms. Cassidy was going to give her son a phone when he turned 11, but said, “I’ve just done a very big U-turn.” Now, she plans to give him a phone that can be used only for calls and texts.
The power of parents collectively delaying smartphones is key, Ms. Greenwell said, because it insulates children from peer pressure. “This problem isn’t that complicated,” she said. “If you have other people around you who are also doing the same thing, it’s actually amazingly, beautifully simple.”
‘Most people just want to keep their children safe’
On a recent Friday morning, dozens of parents gathered in the auditorium of Colindale Primary School in north London for a presentation by Nova Eden, a regional leader for Smartphone Free Childhood.
She described startling data — that the average 12-year-old in Britain spends 21 hours a week on a smartphone, for example, and that 76 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds spend most of their free time on screens. She also talked about emerging research on the impact of smartphone use.
Ms. Eden cited studies showing rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm among teenagers spiking dramatically since social media was introduced. “These children are struggling and they need our help,” Ms. Eden said. “I know how hard it is, but we need to be the ones that stand up and say, this is not good for you.”
Ms. Eden, 44, described struggling to find the right balance for her own children, ages 5, 10 and 13. She said it was the campaigning of Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly took her own life after viewing suicide-related content on Instagram and other social media sites, that drove her to get involved. She had just given her own 13-year-old a phone.
“At that time, I was going through this with my child, and seeing the change in him and his friends,” she said.
Jane Palmer, the principal of the Colindale school, acknowledged that some parents have been skeptical of limiting smartphone use, or of banning the devices from school entirely, as her school will do from September.
Some argue the devices can provide social independence and allow them to contact their children in an emergency. Others feel parental controls go far enough in ensuring safety online.
But the conversations among parents had begun to make way for change, Ms. Palmer said. During the presentation, she described how a former student had died by suicide after being bullied online.
“It can be tricky, and of course not everyone is going to support it,” she said of the ban. “But at the end of the day, I think most people just want to keep their children safe.”
Colindale is in the borough of Barnet, which in February announced plans to become the first borough in Britain to ban smartphones in all its public schools. The initiative will affect some 63,000 children.
Eton, one of Britain’s most elite private schools, announced last year that new students would be banned from bringing smartphones and would instead be issued with Nokia handsets that can only text and make calls.
In Suffolk, the founders of the Smartphone Free Childhood initiative are aware that their success in attracting parents to their cause is partly thanks to social media and messaging apps on which they have spread the word.
“There are loads of positive things about this technology,” Mr. Ryrie said. “We’re not trying to say that technology is bad, just that we need to have a conversation as a society about when it’s appropriate for children to have unrestricted access to this stuff.”
