George Oswald, Paul Montague and Marc Leadbeater believe action is needed to protect local youngsters from harmful material online and prevent them becoming addicted to devices.
They were elected yesterday to lead the Health, Education and Home Affairs Committees respectively – key roles from which they will be able to take on an issue which a recent survey indicated was now of concern to more than three-quarters of parents in Guernsey.
Their elections will be a boost to the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign, which is hosting a public meeting at Les Beaucamps High School today at which a visiting consultant paediatrician will talk to more than 200 parents about how smartphones are ‘poisoning’ children’s brains.
Deputy Oswald would like the misuse of devices by children to be tackled in similar ways to smoking.
‘Legislation is probably not the way to go – that would probably be taking a hammer to a walnut,’ he said, immediately after he was elected unopposed to lead the Health & Social Care Committee.
‘I think the way to treat it is like we treated smoking. It has become socially unacceptable to smoke now, so we’ve got the smoking rate down to about 10% of hardened users.
‘I think we can adapt a community-led programme which makes it socially unacceptable to provide smartphones to your children under whatever age we determine, whether it’s 14 or 12 or possibly younger, knowing there will always be some who get through the net.’
A similar scheme was proposed during the general election campaign by Deputy Montague.
His bid to lead Education, Sport & Culture was also unopposed on a day in which the Assembly supported every nominee put forward by P&R president Lindsay de Sausmarez to complete its line-up of committee presidents for the new political term.
‘I support a community-led ban on smartphones for primary-age children, not out of moral panic but genuine concern for their wellbeing,’ said Deputy Montague.
During a three-way contest for the presidency of the Home Affairs Committee, which was settled on the first round of voting, Deputy Leadbeater described online risks to children as ‘massively important’, given the explosion of use over the past 10 to 15 years.
‘I would like to see a Snapchat ban for under-16s,’ he said.
‘I think we need to look at policies like this.
‘It may sound a bit right wing, but I think we have to stop young people being taken advantage of in this way.’
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