Calls for 'smartphone free' childhood grow in UK

LONDON, United Kingdom — It is the question many adults dread being asked by their children: when can I have a smartphone? But as fears grow about the impact of the gadgets on young minds, some UK parents are fighting back.

The challenge is being led by mother-of-three Daisy Greenwell after a casual school gate conversation spurred her into action.

Greenwell, who had been privately mulling the issue with a close friend for some time, was told by another mother that her own 11-year-old son already had a smartphone, as did a third of the boy's class.

"This conversation has filled me with terror. I don't want to give my child something that I know will damage her mental health and make her addicted," she wrote on Instagram.

"But I also know that the pressure to do so, if the rest of her class have one, will be massive," added the journalist from Woodbridge, eastern England.

The post in February triggered a tidal wave of reaction from parents similarly gripped by anxiety about providing their children with a device they fear will open them up to predators, online bullying, social pressure and harmful content.

Greenwell and her friend Clare Reynolds have now launched the Parents United for a Smartphone Free Childhood campaign.

Academic research combined with parents' own experiences have created a sense of dread about a child's request for a phone.

At the same time parents say they feel powerless to refuse, with phones for school-age children "normalised", supposedly on safety grounds.

UK schools minister Damian Hinds told a parliamentary committee recently almost all pupils now got a mobile phone around the age of 11 or 12.

"There seems to be something of a rite of passage about that," he told MPs, adding that some children got one "quite a lot earlier".

After Greenwell finally broached the subject on Instagram, a WhatsApp group she set up to discuss the issue with Reynolds quickly filled with like-minded parents relieved that others felt the same way.

Then the reaction just "snowballed", she added.

Greenwell said there is now a group in every area of the country as well as a few working groups for people with professional expertise on the issue.

"We've got an