Media and communications professionals should be paying attention to this growing movement

The push for a ‘Smartphone-free childhood’ is the latest chapter in an evolving narrative that the overwhelming avalanche and decreasing reliability of the information we are presented daily is not just distracting us but harming our mental health and not simply curtailing our attention spans but affecting our cognitive abilities.
 
Contemporary media channels are saturated with content, struggling to balance quality with commercial viability, culturally and politically riven, and evolving at a speed that bamboozles those responsible for regulation and safeguarding.
 
So it’s understandable that a growing segment of the population are talking about switching off completely.
 
There’s the challenge for professional communicators. How do we contribute to an ecosystem that breeds positive and considered engagement that doesn’t spiral into addiction and disillusionment?
 
In my view, for governments, the answer isn’t banning smartphones, it’s educating people (not just kids) how to consume media healthily, discerningly and, yes, safely. We’ve all heard about Finland battling fake news in primary schools. Perhaps we could extrapolate that to the responsible consumption even of ‘good’ information.
 
For us media professionals it underlines our responsibility to ensure that what we put out into the world is intelligent, relevant and high-quality. That we’re widening people’s horizons rather than deepening their addiction, or risking their health and safety.
 
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