Smart and Dumb Phones
Most children at our school have a mobile phone. Nearly all of them are a so-called smart phone. When I ask parents why they have provided their child with a phone, the most common answers revolve around being able to readily communicate with the child around pick-ups and drop-offs, in the milieu of busy family lives.
Often, parents suggest it is also about their child’s safety. I would contend that the most dangerous place a child can be in this country, is on the internet. This is often in many families, an unsupervised space. Children by and large, are safer walking to and from school, going to the shops, or hanging out at the park, than they are with their heads in their phones.
We now know the potentially nasty side-effects of doomscrolling, spending too much time on the net and the effects on wellbeing, self-esteem, and rapidly diminishing attention spans. We also know that there are people who actively trawl children’s gaming sites with the intention of doing them harm.
Recent research (see Jared Cooney Hovarth’s excellent text The Digital Delusion, 2025) is also informing us that the current generation, unlike any other generation in more than a century, will not be smarter than their parents. The causal link here is the ubiquitous access to devices.
I used to say I was not a Luddite, but I am reconsidering my position!
I ask parents again: does your child really need a smartphone in his pocket? During school hours it certainly should be in his bag or safely stored in his locker. This may well be an aspect of the liberating education we provide in an Edmund Rice school, where liberation from technology is something that truly frees a boy to be himself, to be in relationship and to be safe. I wonder how dumb our smart phones are making us. Perhaps a dumb phone might make all of us smarter.
Doomscrolling
Yesterday, renowned child and adolescent psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg offered advice about how parents might talk to their teenagers about conflict in the Middle East. He suggested that parents might find it difficult to discuss the topic with their children and are sometimes at a loss as to what to say. He suggests that when our children see the footage (of which there is no shortage on all media platforms), they are not analysing foreign policy but rather asking whether the world is safe.
It is advisable for parents he says, to speak, rather than say nothing. In the silence, the teenager might just fill in the gaps. Neither lecturing, nor reassuring too quickly is advisable. Our best approach is to be authentic and not pretending we know with any certainty what might happen.
Dr Carr-Gregg says words to the effect of “You’re probably seeing a lot of this online – how is this making you feel?” is a good starting point. We can assure them that feeling worried is normal, and that exposure to disturbing images does increase anxiety, and that they still have control over their daily lives. The greatest risk he warns, to teenagers right now, is doomscrolling.
Dr Carr Gregg offers five takeaways for parents:
Dr Craig Wattam
Principal
Reference
Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, AO. (2026, March 1). Right now, teenagers are watching history unfold not through newspapers or nightly bulletins, but through an endless stream of videos. [Post]. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse...
