Children and smartphones – how one group of parents in Shropshire is fighting back

It is now commonplace for adults to be seen 'glued' to their smartphone screen, be it while walking down the street or 'watching' the TV, it's the first thing most check when they wake up and the last thing they'll look at before they go to sleep at night.

The benefits and opportunities offered by smartphones are undoubted, but their role as a functional tool is almost entirely matched by their success as a form of entertainment and distraction – straying into addiction.

It is not all about what we look at online, a significant part of the shift has been in the way we communicate, with the constant access to social media shaping the way we see the world, and each other. Often framing real-world debate and the divisions that follow.

Those impacts on adult society have been seismic, but an increasing area of concern is their effect on children.

The issue is one that parents across the country have been grappling with as the number of children owning smartphones rises – while parents whose children don't yet have one face constant requests or concerns they are somehow disadvantaging their youngsters by denying them access.

While adults can be expected to balance the benefits and risks of smartphones, those risks are exaggerated in the hands of vulnerable youngsters.

They take a number of forms – the shift of the old-as-time playground bullying to the online forum – with no end to the school day, exposure to graphic and harmful content – be it sexual, violent or a mix of both, as well as the genuine worry of opening up young people to potential harm from predatory sex offenders.

Reporters from this paper have sat in frequent court hearings over recent years listening to how abusers have used the anonymity provided by their smartphone to target young people.

A report published by Parliament's Education Committee earlier this year made for shocking reading.

It quoted research from Ofcom which concluded that one in five children aged between three and four years old has their own phone.

Ownership increases gradually to age eight, when one in four children have their own phone.

By age 12, almost all children have their own mobile phone.

Amid increasing concern about the impact of access to smartphones on children, and how best to deal with it, a group of worried Shropshire parents has decided they needed to do something.

Set up earlier this year the Shropshire Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC) group has already hosted a series of public meetings – with its next taking place later this month.

The appetite for a discussion on the issue has been evidenced by the number of people at the meetings – with several hundred parents attending.