Comment by cbeach
4 days ago
At my kids' school (UK, ages 5-11), many parents have signed an online pact to agree not to give smartphones to their children:
https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/
The website lists the number of pacts, broken down by school and year group.
My kid is in year 1 (age 5) and the website received pacts on behalf of 42 out of approx 60 children in this year group.
Hopefully with a little more publicity, the remainder will agree to sign the pact too.
Given the website shows all the data for pacts by school, I ran it past ChatGPT o1 to look for any correlations.
https://chatgpt.com/share/6786bc74-9e18-800d-b474-d57ef2c107...
“Large, well-attended primary schools in more populous or affluent areas tend to have higher numbers [of pacts], whereas small primaries, grammar/secondary schools, or independent schools with fewer total pupils often appear with lower numbers.”
I definitely see a relationship in the data whereby affluent areas have a higher number of pacts. I wonder if this is due to stronger societal cohesion / shared norms in affluent areas?
Whereas in deprived areas in the UK there's more unassimilated immigration from cultural groups that self-segregate.