You’ve decided you don’t want to post pictures of your baby online. What about all the requests for cute photos from grandparents? Welcome to Opt Out, a semi-regular column in which we help you navigate your online privacy and show you how to say no to surveillance. The last column covered how to protect your baby’s photos on the internet. You’re a parent, and you’ve decided publicly posting your baby’s face on the internet is just not for you. You’ve got a handle on how to actually protect your baby’s photos on the internet (perhaps because you’ve read our guide!). Now it’s just a matter of doing it. Continue reading...

Signatories to online pledge say it offers support in family reckonings over phone usage Classroom peer pressure is a problem for any parent considering a smartphone ban for their child. So when the Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC) movement launched an online pledge to withhold the devices from children until they are at least 14, thousands of parents saw an opportunity to gather moral support for looming arguments. Continue reading...

There has been a huge wave of parental concern about smartphones this year. So do kids without them feel deprived – or more alive? Nothing has been able to stop smartphones taking over our lives and those of our children. But the inevitable backlash is in full flow. It’s not only about family arguments over screen-time restrictions, or the often futile efforts of parents to minimise exposure to adult, radicalising or consumerist content. With the rising perception that phones are addictive and interfere with children’s learning, creativity and concentration, and with more than 97% of 12-year-olds owning a smartphone, schools have been taking action. In February, the UK government issued guidance on smartphones and some schools have since banned them. Also in February, two concerned parents created the WhatsApp group Smartphone Free Childhood. The online community now has more than 120,000 members, “with a local group in every county in the UK and thousands of school groups within those”, according to the co-founder, Daisy Greenwell. Continue reading...

While ultrasound services are normal practice in many countries, software being tested in Uganda will allow a scan without the need for specialists, providing an incentive for pregnant women to visit health services early on Mothers-to-be have become used to the first glimpse of their baby via the fuzzy black and white ultrasound scan, an image that can be shown to friends and family. But it remains a luxury in many parts of the world. Now AI is being used to develop technology to bring the much-anticipated pregnancy milestone to women who are most in need of the scan’s medical checkup on a baby’s health. A pilot project in Uganda is using AI software to power ultrasound imaging to not only scan unborn babies but also to encourage women to attend health services at an earlier stage in their pregnancies, helping to reduce stillbirths and complications. Continue reading...

Most UK children have their own phone by the age of 11. But what if we didn’t give them one? A group of parents wants their kids to enjoy a phone-free childhood – and their numbers are growing Last year, Daisy Greenwell and Clare Fernyhough, longtime friends who have eight- and nine-year-old daughters, began having drawn-out conversations about smartphones. Rumours were swirling that children in their daughters’ classes were asking for their own and both Greenwell and Fernyhough were apprehensive about the knock-on effect. If their daughters’ friends owned smartphones, wouldn’t their daughters eventually demand them, too? And what might happen then? Talking to the parents of children who already owned smartphones only helped to increase their concern. “They told us about kids disappearing into their screens,” Greenwell said recently. “They don’t want to hang out with family any more. They don’t want to go outside.” A local teacher told Greenwell he was able to speak with his daughter only when the wifi was turned off. “And these are the lighter problems,” she said. Neither Greenwell nor Fernyhough wanted to buy smartphones for their children until they turned 16 (preferably they wouldn’t own them until much later). But they could feel pressure mounting. In the UK, 91% of 11-year-olds have a smartphone – it became common remarkably quickly for children to be given a phone when they began secondary school – and 20% of children own them by the time they are four. (The average age for a UK child to receive their first smartphone is around nine.) With grim acceptance, secondary school parents told Greenwell, “It’s the worst, it’s so, so bad, but there’s no choice” – they couldn’t find a way to prevent their children from having something all of their friends already owned. Both Greenwell and Fernyhough felt trapped; for their daughters, secondary school loomed on the horizon. “We thought, ‘What can we do about it?’” Greenwell told me. “Shall we not get one? But what if everyone else gets one and our children are the only ones without?” Continue reading...