Automatically translated from Basque, translation may contain errors. More information here. Elhuyarren itzultzaile automatikoaren logoa

No mobile for up to 13 years: Decision taken by all parent associations of an Irish city

  • If all the families and schools of a town agree that they are not going to buy smartphones to the children, the pressure to give their children a mobile is over, the exclusion of those few children without a mobile phone is over. Well, the eight schools in the Irish city of Greystones and their parent associations have agreed on the “Smartphone Free Code”. “You don’t feel ‘strange about the neighborhood’ together.
Gurasoen batasuna gako inportantea da, gehienek bide bera urratzen badute lortzen dutelako smartphonea ez izatea desoreka eta bazterketa iturri.

13 June 2023 - 03:00

Until they start the equivalent of our Compulsory Secondary Education (approximately 12-13 years), what is agreed is a voluntary code that says they will not give smartphones to children. All educational centers equivalent to our Primary Education and their parent associations have participated: eight in total. There will be a home that buys a cell phone to the child, but there are many families that have already joined and, therefore, a large number is the one that stops buying a cell phone to children under 13.

The decision has been made to see the children who bought the smartphone ever earlier and banned it at school, but who used the cell phone outside school, because it's much easier to say not at home if others behave similarly. The union of parents is an important key, as if most break the same path, they make the smartphone not a source of imbalance and exclusion. Pressure has taken the opposite direction in an Irish city of some 18,000 inhabitants.

In Basque Country, by

In our case it is also worrying to decide from what age to buy smartphones to your children. In many centers, following the same philosophy as in Greystones, the parents themselves discuss and agree how long it takes to buy the mobile phone to make it a joint decision. In ARGIA we counted the case of ikastola Udarrangi: every three months parents negotiate, to see if the delivery of mobile to children is in a position to delay another three months. “I don’t know if we’ll get our children delayed until they’re 16, but we’ll gradually walk.”

One of Udarrangi’s parents also talked to us about the reasons why age was delayed, in that article: on the one hand, children’s brains are not prepared to properly manage the input drain on mobiles, and on the other, they generate enormous dependence – we see it with adults.


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