News Investigation

'Our kitchen has become the hub of an exploding movement of parents'

Feb 2024 🇬🇧 Positive News

In this first-person piece for Positive News, where she worked as features editor, Daisy Greenwell describes how a private WhatsApp group she started with friend Clare Fernyhough — created to support each other in delaying smartphones for their children — grew almost overnight into a nationwide parent network. Greenwell writes that the original group reached WhatsApp's 1,023-member limit within days of an Instagram post, prompting a wave of spin-off groups organized by county and by school. She frames smartphone access among children as an area parents are increasingly anxious about, citing research she says links earlier smartphone adoption with higher reported rates of mental illness among young people, and describes the campaign's aim as giving parents school-based tools to coordinate delaying phones together rather than alone.

1,023-member WhatsApp cap reached within days

Greenwell writes that the founders' first support WhatsApp group filled to WhatsApp's 1,023-member limit within days of her Instagram post, forcing them to open additional groups.

~70 school-linked groups in Hampshire within three weeks

Within three weeks, parent groups had formed county-by-county across the UK, including roughly 70 school-specific groups in Hampshire alone, according to the piece.

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CITATION

Greenwell, Daisy. "'Our kitchen has become the hub of an exploding movement of parents.'" Positive News, 28 Feb. 2024. https://www.positive.news/society/smartphones-free-childhood/

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