Should Young Children have Mobile Phones?
This is a hugely controversial subject and one that has been the focus of numerous studies.
Unfortunately, many of the studies have been contradictory in their findings, so much of this remains a matter of parental and Dianella preschool childcare centre opinion. We have written on a closely related subject (overall screen time use) recently but we thought a quick specific comment on mobile phones might be useful.
Dianella preschool childcare and mobile phones
It often surprises people to discover that technically, the mobile phone goes back to at least the 1920s! It remained largely a novelty item restricted to the super-rich or sometimes the authorities, until the 1980s.
In the 1980s, mobile phones began to emerge as a new technology, gradually becoming more widely available to the general public. However, during this period, these devices were often large, unwieldy, and cumbersome, making them less than practical for everyday use.
Additionally, they remained prohibitively expensive items for the majority of people, which limited their accessibility and widespread adoption. As we moved into the middle of the 1990s, significant advancements in technology led to mobile phones becoming smaller, more compact, and increasingly affordable.
Around this same time, these devices started to gain the ability to access the embryonic stages of the internet, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of mobile communication and setting the stage for the future development of smartphones and mobile internet usage.
That’s about when parents for the first time started to give them to younger children to use. Originally, that was largely related to security and logistics (e.g. pick-up time changes) and therefore, mainly only an issue for primary school ages. Yet by the 00s, the power and sophistication of mobile phones had significantly increased and they started to be considered indispensable for at least some preschool age children.
What’s the harm?
Nobody has ever seriously disputed that this technology gives a huge degree of parental reassurance when their children are out of sight. Even at preschool ages, knowing a child can be traced or has the instant ability to contact a parent is a major positive.
Unfortunately, these devices brought with them some challenges. Some of these were practical considerations, including the loss, theft or breaking of expensive gadgets.
Others were more insidious though, as children began to spend more and more leisure time on their phones and less playing with other children or engaging in physical activities.
If left unchecked, that tendency is typically regarded by most child development experts as being potentially harmful to their psychological development.
Current official advice
As we have stated previously, the government’s position and guidelines can be summarised as follows
- for children under 2, zero screen time (this includes phones of course);
- for those between 2-5, a maximum of 1 hour per day;
- with children aged 5-6 years, sedentary recreational screen time per day (again, including phones) should be restricted to a maximum of 2 hours – though schoolwork can be added to that where necessary.
Our policy
We believe that pre-schoolers in a Dianella preschool childcare centre should be in an interactive environment. That interaction should be physical with other children, their care providers and the lessons they’re involved in – not the virtual or social media world.
Generally, we don’t permit the use of mobile phones in our learning environment. We may, at times, use technology as a teaching aid but that is in the context of a lesson and is not personal leisure.
We do, of course, understand that some parents may have different views on their child being able to use a mobile phone when in a Dianella preschool centre or any other Early Learning establishment. If you’d like to understand more of our policies and practices in this area, why not call us for an appointment to come along and chat things through?
