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The question of when, or whether, to allow young children to have their own smartphones is a dilemma for parents around the world. One town in Ireland decided to take action to make it easier for parents to say no. Greystones made global headlines when the headteachers from all of the town’s primary schools came together to invite parents to sign up to a voluntary code, pledging not to buy phones for children until they reached secondary school.

Around a year after the ‘ban’ of sorts came into effect, the ´óÏó´«Ã½â€™s Beth McLeod travelled to the town in County Wicklow to investigate the impact. Through conversations with teachers, parents, children and Ireland’s health minister, she tells us about the origins of a policy designed to minimise exposure to potentially harmful online content, and hears how some people want the big tech companies headquartered in nearby Dublin to do more to prevent young people from accessing damaging material on their platforms.

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TGS is part of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News Podcasts family. The team that makes The Global Story also makes several other podcasts, such as Americast and Ukrainecast, which cover US news and the war in Ukraine. If you enjoy The Global Story, then we think that you will enjoy some of our other podcasts too. To find them, simply search on your favourite podcast app.

This episode was made by Tom Kavanagh and Alice Aylett Roberts. The technical producers were Hannah Montgomery and Mike Regaard. The assistant editor is Sergi Forcada Freixas and the senior news editor is Sam Bonham.