It’s time to ban smartphones for under-16s

But the greater severity lies in pretending parents can manage alone a risk society has placed in every child’s pocket.

If a child found an unexploded mine in the street, no responsible adult would say: “Let’s teach them to handle it sensibly.” We would not hold awareness weeks or ask the manufacturer to improve its labelling. We would take it away.

The comparison may sound theatrical, but I am not sure it is wrong. A smartphone in the hand of a child is not just a phone. It is an adult world, compressed into glass and metal, handed to someone too young to understand its dangers.

We talk about this mostly as a matter of screen time. We ask whether children are scrolling too much. Or whether they are distracted, anxious, sleepless, permanently comparing themselves with other people’s edited lives. These are fair questions. But they are not, to my mind, the central question. The central question is safeguarding.

As a solicitor who works with survivors of abuse, I cannot look at smartphones merely as troublesome gadgets. They are also a means of access. Increasingly, children are groomed, pressured, threatened and manipulated through social media and digital platforms. The old image of the predator at the school gate is outdated. The school gate has moved – it is now in the child’s pocket.

That is why the case for a legal ban on smartphones for under-16s is stronger than many people wish to admit. This is not the old panic about video games or television in another form, rather a recognition that the mechanics of abuse have changed. An abuser no longer needs proximity. They need a profile, where they can reach a child privately, anonymously, repeatedly, and from anywhere.

Artificial intelligence has made this darker still. A child does not now need to send an explicit image to be exploited. An innocent picture can be taken, altered and converted into abusive material. Once created, such material is almost impossible to recall. We would be dishonest if we pretended parental controls could solve this.

Of course, the state should not barge clumsily into family life. Parents, not ministers, should usually decide what is best for their children. But we have never treated childhood as a zone in which adult society has no duties. We do not leave alcohol, cigarettes, gambling or driving to individual parental discretion. We set age limits because some risks are too serious for families to manage alone.

A ban would not be simple. There would need to be exceptions: basic phones, emergency contact, children with additional needs, and careful thought about enforcement. Every law has edges.

But imperfection is not an argument for paralysis. The question is not whether every smartphone will explode. Of course it will not. The question is why we keep placing unexploded mines in children’s hands, and then telling parents they must defuse them alone.

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Malcolm Johnson is Head of Abuse Claims at Lime Solicitors.

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