Irish town unites in smartphone ban for young children

It's telling that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates wouldn't let their young children have iPads or smartphones until they were older.

This is a great idea and I hope it works and is expanded. At our children's elementary school, phones were collected and held by the teachers. In secondary school, the teachers don't try to limit or control access and even "require" phones for quizzes.

USA surgeon general even came out against the threat of screentime and the lack of help that parents have when pitted against the best minds in the industries.

Interesting and promising seeming strategy to counter not only issues of 'peer pressure to own a device' but 'culture pressure' wherein assumedly for many schools most of the topics of humor and interest are quite online.

A couple of issue to highlight though - Internet memes and content can be reach crazy levels of salient and funny though, and in appropriate amounts, seems life enriching and sometimes contributory to consciousness and self-awareness no?

Additionally, a purely suppressive approach creates a fairly big incentive for kids/guardians to exploit the informational asymmetry of the system using clandestine/contraband access.

For this I propose community provided memes. As chosen by Birdwatch style-voting.

> Webb saw value in extending phone use restrictions across all ages. “It would be a good rule but I don’t think the adults would be happy.”

This kid is on the money. There is a monkey on the back of our society and adults can’t handle it any more than children can.

There should be laws banning social media for kids.

I just proposed this at a happy hour for dads at my kid’s school (he’s 10). More like a pact. They liked the idea but I doubt it’ll go anywhere since Everyone likes to feel in control.