• SFC (formerly Smartphone-Free Childhood) has launched South Africa’s first digital parent pact.
• The organisation aims to limit the use of smartphones and social media among young children.
• It has pre-loaded all 18 000 registered primary schools in South Africa for parents wanting to take part in the pact.

In recent days SFC, formerly Smartphone-Free Childhood), has launched an initiative aimed at tackling the use of smartphones by young children in South Africa.

Dubbed a first for the country, the Digital Parent Pact is focused on delaying smartphone and social media for kids, particularly within the context of how addictive and pervasive the technologies can be.

The pact, which is voluntary, says it will enable parents to commit to delaying giving their children a smartphone until high school. Explaining how the pact works, SFC notes that once 10 parents from the same school and grade sign up online, the pact is “unlocked” for the group, connecting families with similar attitudes towards smartphone use and social media.

SFC adds that this creates a support network within the school community. At the time of writing, the organisation says that all 18 000 registered primary schools in South Africa have been loaded onto the pact.

“This collective approach allows parents to resist the growing pressure to introduce smartphones and social media to their children at an increasingly younger age,” SFC highlights in a release shared with Hypertext.

While the distraction of social media and smartphones is one aspect of the Digital Parent Pact, SFC is more concerned with the psychological impact that the technologies potentially result in.

“There is now a raft of evidence showing the negative impact of smartphones and social media on young people’s wellbeing. Rates of depression, anxiety and suicide in young people have soared since 2010, when children first began receiving smartphones,” says Courtney Atkinson, SFC working group member.

“Today’s young adults (18-24-year-olds) are the first generation to have gone through adolescence with this technology. The data shows that the younger they were when they received their first smartphone, the worse their mental health is today,” she continues.

The data being referred to here, a 2023 report from Sapien Labs (PDF) points out that, “Mental wellbeing consistently improved with older age of first ownership of a smartphone or tablet,
with a steeper change in females compared to males.”

“The percentage of females experiencing mental health challenges decreased from 74% for those who received their first smartphone at age 6, to 46% for those who received it at age 18. For males, the percentage declined from 42% at age 6 to 36% at age 18,” the report unpacks.

While it will be interesting to see how effective such a movement will be, especially given how pervasive a smartphone can be, keeping kids away from the effects of always being online may prove difficult.

On this front, SFC has more resources available to parents, as well as communities to engage with other parents.

To find out more about the Digital Parent Pact, as well as sign up, head here.