When Rachel Harper approached other primary school principals in Greystones, Co Wicklow, three years ago to discuss heightened anxiety levels among older pupils she had no idea she was starting a journey that would bring the world’s media to her door.
Those early conversations led to a voluntary ban on smartphones across eight primary schools in the town and attracted interest from media in Ireland, across the rest of the European Union, the UK, the United States and Australia.
Harper laughs at how one foreign reporter asked if an Irish “village” like Greystones even had the internet and if people lived in thatched cottages.
The international interest in the “It Takes A Village” initiative in Greystones, led by Harper, highlights the global nature of the challenges facing young people, parents and educators, given the ubiquity of smartphones.
“It doesn’t matter where parents are in the world,” said Harper, principal of St Patrick’s National School. “They all have huge concerns and that unites us. I’m really proud Ireland helped get a conversation going.”
On Thursday evening, Harper travelled to Ratoath, Co Meath, to share the experiences of her school community and encouraging others to join the campaign.
“Change does happen when we all work together,” she said. “Ultimately this is about empowering young people.”
In the initiative’s first year, workshops for parents were central. Last year they brought in transition-year students to talk to the area’s younger primary school students in sixth class.
“The 16-year-olds have so much wisdom to share and they have inspired us so much,” Harper said.
She said transition-year students “aren’t saying anything different to what we would say as teachers or parents, but it just lands so much better”.
The mentoring programmes had proved to be “a very simple idea but very effective”.
“And it has kept the journey going. I’ve no doubt that parents would have got bored of the voluntary ban eventually, but this makes it an ongoing process,” Harper said.
The demonstrable effect of the voluntary phone ban was in how it had taken the pressure off parents and children, she said.
“It’s not like a rite of passage any more that when you get up to fifth or sixth class you must have a phone or you’re not in the cool gang,” she said.
The Ratoath event was hosted by Fine Gael MEP Nina Carberry, who told the gathering that online safety would be “a big part of Ireland’s EU presidency”.
Carberry said managing the tech giants was “best done at an EU-wide level. Ireland can do its bit, but with 27 countries working together and making the platforms accountable is the most powerful we can be”.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee, who also attended the Ratoath event, said the Government was watching how the ban on some social media platforms in Australia was being implemented, but she said age verification was the central focus at present.
“If we’re going to introduce age verification, how do we make sure that it is going to be effective? The digital age of consent at the moment is 16, but we don’t actually implement it in the way that we should,” she said.
Bodie Mangan Gisler, who is in sixth class in St Patrick’s, Greystones, and where his mother Alizia is a teacher, said the mentoring from older students had been “really helpful”.
“Fourth years understand us and they give us loads of helpful tips, so that if something bad that ever happens we know that we can tell the parents and that we know how to deal with it,” he said.
His mother Alizia said she had “definitely” seen change in children she taught since the voluntary ban came into effect.
“Bodie’s my first child, so I’m really nervous about handing him the internet, so to speak,” she said.
“And just to know that I’m not the only parent and there’s others in the same boat and they are just holding off for a little longer and that’s really helpful to me.”