As a father, I think banning smartphones is hypocritical

Today, around 3,000 schools in the UK have had to stop educating children and instead let adults use their buildings as polling stations in which to exercise their democratic right to vote.

- OLIVER KEENS

But what of the democratic rights of children? It seems almost quaint to consider that they have any – despite the fact that around a fifth of the population, over 14 million people, are under the voting age of 18.

To my mind, nothing says more about how little we value those rights than the concept of a smartphone ban for young people – an idea the government will soon be consulting on. Will they actively seek the views of those it will affect, or will a cabal of very motivated adults drown them out? I suspect the latter.

As a parent of a six-year-old and a nine-year-old, I’ve been bounced into multiple, surprisingly well-organised, WhatsApp groups that are campaigning to ban smartphones. The most notable of these is run by the group Smartphone Free Childhood, which follows the Sunak-approved writings of American psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

I’m surprised not just at the vehemence of its members but at the hypocrisy of adults uniting on phones and social media to prevent their children from having the same privilege. None of these parents are proposing getting rid of their own phones, despite the omnipresent awareness that smartphones can mess with an adult’s life just as much as a child’s.