My daughter wasn’t going to get a smartphone until she turned 16.
That was my boundary, and I stuck to it. She could get a face tattoo, join the Reform Party, insist on being called by the pronoun Xe, all I cared about, but she wouldn’t get an iPhone until she could buy one for herself. Or Xerself.
“I want to preserve her childhood,” I proclaimed haughtily, as friends with children already in high school tried to emphasize how difficult it is to keep your kids smartphone-free as they get older.
“They need them to stay in touch when they travel to school alone,” someone would argue.
“Nonsense!” I replied, pointing out that in 1992 I had to travel eight stops to school on the metro every morning, without even a carrier pigeon for company, and that nothing bad had ever happened to me (except that time a stranger flashed me, but that was different now, wasn’t it?)
Bryony Gordon and daughter Edie dress up in all the right sparkle for Taylor Swift’s era tour
“Your child feels left out if all his/her friends are texting and he/she isn’t part of the group,” argued another mother.
“Well, I’m going to raise a child who is confident enough not to be bothered by peer pressure,” I replied.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” the parents of the older children replied, rolling their eyes, as condescending as I am when my 11-year-old insists on going outside in the blustery wind and rain without a coat.
I would show them!
As year five rolled into year six, we remained one of the few families who refused to give our child a phone. Every week, our daughter, Edie, would come home and tell us that another friend of hers had become digitally connected, and every week I would tell her that she would eventually thank me for my determination.
“You can have a dumb phone when you get to high school,” I told her, “but that’s it!”
She finished primary school last month and I ignored her pleas for a phone until two weeks ago, when I received her new school jacket with tears in my eyes, I realised I could no longer ignore her.
After much care, consideration and research, it was decided to go with a brick phone with limited capabilities (similar to the new £99 Barbie phone launched this week, which allows calling and texting but lacks social media).
Buoyed by EE’s recent announcement that children must be protected from smartphones for their ‘digital wellbeing’, and by the Irish Medical Association’s call on Wednesday for a ban on mobile phones for under-16s, we headed to the High Street with full confidence in our somewhat old-fashioned resolve.
It was under the bright neon lights of the phone shop that I began to experience what I will now call my own personal Waterloo. The man serving us chuckled when I asked to see the selection of ‘dumb phones’.
“We don’t have them in the store,” he said, “and frankly, you don’t want your kids using a device that you don’t know how to train yourself to use. There’s a reason they’re used by drug dealers as disposable phones, if you know what I mean?”
I didn’t know what he meant, but the images of my 11-year-old daughter having a rural childhood because I wanted to give her an old phone had now been replaced by images of her joining a criminal gang.
“Forget it, we’re getting an iPhone,” I gasped, spinning faster than a prime minister after an election victory. “You’re the best mother ever!” my surprised child shrieked.
“I told you so!” all my friends laughed when I admitted my inverted ferret.
So despite all my boasting, my daughter will be entering high school with a smartphone in her pocket, and a hypocrite for a mother. Or should I say idealist? Because I think that’s what a lot of us suffer from when it comes to this whole smartphone conversation – we want our kids to grow up in some kind of Swallows And Amazons utopia that never really existed.
But when it comes to phones, we have to accept that the genie has been out of the bottle for a while.
Doing this is not abandoning our children to social media, it is compromising and accepting the reality of the world we live in, on our own terms, instead of Meta and TikTok’s. My daughter’s safety and mental health will always be my priority.
We have set up her new device with so many extensive parental controls that it is really nothing more than an expensive version made from two cans and a piece of string.
We also put her on a parental phone contract – no social media until she is at least 14, parental access to her messages, and everything must be turned off by 8pm. We’ll see how long this lasts, given how quickly I caved in the phone shop.
But it’s also a good reminder of an important truth: parenting is much easier in theory than in practice. And just like my child going off to high school, I will always have something new to learn.
My LED mask isn’t working? I don’t care!
Whether LED masks worn by celebrities like Victoria Beckham actually do anything for your skin is ‘highly questionable’, according to new research. Scientists say the LED light can only travel to the outermost layer, rather than deeper where ‘real change happens’.
As an LED mask obsessive, I have to say I don’t give a damn. My £395 mask from Light Salon is my most treasured possession. It might not make a difference to my crow’s feet, but it does wonders for my mood.
And it’s the perfect way to take some time for myself: sitting under the red light in a machine that makes me look like Jason from Friday The 13th, my family is too scared to come near me.
- With Oasis on the verge of reform and a new Labour government in power, things are starting to feel a lot like the late 90s again. There are just a few things missing this time: my sense of hope for the future and my glowing 17-year-old skin.
Hooray for Barbie’s gorgeous bare belly
Margot Robbie, who is pregnant with her first child, is currently on holiday in Sardinia with her husband Tom Ackerley. Instead of flaunting her designer outfits, she is styling her baby bump in loose tops and drawstring trousers, just like any other woman trying to cope with the heat in her last trimester. Another reason to love this down-to-earth A-lister!
I can’t wait for the M&S style store
Back in the day, you would do anything to avoid Marks & Spencers on your way to Percy Pigs. The style seemed frumpy, forever linked to the ‘St Michael’ brand of the 50s.
But things are changing: Sienna Miller recently did a coveted collection with the store, while my friends and I drool over the affordable, size-inclusive cashmere sweaters and up-to-date dresses. And now, M&S is about to open its first fashion store, in Battersea Power Station in London. Once it opens in November, I’ll be there faster than you can say “Colin the Caterpillar.”
