DAD DIARY: Technology, our kids and the end of childhood

Frankie asked Aisling for help pronouncing a phrase she had never seen before in her homework and when Aisling said it, a shiver went down my spine. ‘Cyberbullying’.
It’s part of the curriculum for Second Class students and was a sobering reminder that our seven-year-old girl is getting closer and closer to the dangerous world of technology, social media and smartphones.
That cyberbullying needs to be taught at Second Class level is a telling example of the young ages that many children are becoming intimately familiar with technology.
Every generation is fond of saying, ‘Well, back when I was young I only had …’. For our generation it is two channels on TV and no option to skip the ads. For my parents’ generation, the regular refrain was ‘We were lucky to get an orange for Christmas’. (I still don’t know how accurate that statement is!)
And we must accept that our children are of a different generation with access to many different things and all the pros and cons that come with that. We cannot wish away smartphones, tempting as it is, but we can do more to control their impact.
I’ve met many parents of teenagers who have all said the same thing about smartphones – that the day their son or daughter first got their hands on a smartphone was the day their childhood ended.
There is something heartbreaking about that – a day of great excitement for the child is one of great worry and sadness for the parents. And understandably so.
It’s a really tricky subject. Some parents may relent on this easier than others. It might be that they held out longer with the first child but once that child had a smartphone, it was harder to keep their siblings from having one. And then if you are a parent who insists on keeping your child from owning a smartphone until a certain point in their life, there is the risk of them being alienated from their friends.
We would have always said it would be Secondary School before Frankie would get a smartphone, and the same for her brothers. But you have to be very aware of the situation with their peers too.
There’s a lot to like about a group set up by parents in the parish of Clarinbridge in Galway advocating for that kids in the national schools in the parish enjoy a smartphone-free childhood during primary-school age.
It removes pressure from parents and creates a norm and a standard, in the absence of long-overdue State intervention. We hope that by the time our kids are teenagers, there are greater controls on access and use of social media than is currently the case. In the meantime, are we not better off ensuring kids don’t have smartphones?

In his long-running fortnightly column, Edwin McGreal charts the ups and downs of the biggest wake-up call of his life: Parenthood.