In the Irish town of Greystones, a voluntary pact could offer a blueprint for parents grappling with the question: what is the right age to give a child a smartphone? There, the community has agreed to wait until secondary school before handing devices to their children.
The initiative, called "It Takes A Village", is led by the school principal, who is featured on the BBC's Tech Life programme alongside a local parent. The agreement is voluntary, but reflects growing concern about the impact of screen time on younger children.
“A voluntary agreement in Greystones, Ireland, sees parents wait until secondary school to give children smartphones.”
Elsewhere in the same programme, a woman tells presenter Shiona McCallum how a late-night attack inspired her to develop a wearable safety device. And in Sweden, an experiment saw AI let loose to run a cafe – the episode explores what happened next.
As the debate over smartphones and children intensifies, the Greystones model may spark discussion in the UK about whether communities could adopt similar guidelines.