In our last Digital Matters post, we noted that modern smartphones are designed to instill habitual use in their owners. This puts families in a difficult spot, as children with smartphones struggle to moderate their usage, which can quickly lead to conflict with parents.

It is therefore very pleasing to note a groundswell of parental organisations, popping up right across the globe, with the aim of helping families to delay the age at which their children become smartphone owners. The logic here is simple: children who do not own smartphones are protected from many of the harms that research has associated with them. In addition, having fewer peers and classmates who own smartphones reduces social pressure on parents to give their own children such a device. Under this logic, we have long recommended 13 years of age as the very earliest that a child should own a smartphone, and last year we increased this recommendation to 14.

We recently added some questions regarding smartphone ownership to our Data Updater, which all parents complete at the start of the year. This information will help our form tutors to manage phone locker boxes. We are pleased to be able to share some interesting figures around smartphone ownership.

What is pleasing to note here is the relatively low percentage of Year 7s who own smartphones. Based on informal observation, this appears to represent a decrease on previous years, in which almost all Year 7s seemed to own phones. This seems to be a significant step in the right direction, and one that we are very grateful to see and encourage.