For Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week, A mother persuaded her oldest two to trade their iPhones for basic bricks … and it was a revelation. Said by a mother.

Let’s confirm first that one of the most successful ways of turning your teenagers to get used to the non-availability of the cell phone is to engage them in family activities.

Nowadays we have an unhealthy nature of the relationship between teens and their tech. Sixteen years on from the advent of the iPhone, 14 years since the first WhatsApp group was formed and 13 years after the creation of Instagram, we have a generation of young adults who have never known a world without social media.

Even the relatively more recent Snapchat instant messaging app, beloved of Generation Z-ers, has been around for more than a decade. A 2020 survey of five to 16-year-olds in Britain showed they spent an average three hours and 20 minutes a day on their phones. Nearly 60% said they always slept with their device by their bed and were fearful of what would happen if they didn’t have it.

Yet as smartphones have become more sophisticated, so too have the methods used to keep children hooked on their screens. From the lure of hastily swipe able TikTok videos to the obsessive-compulsive nature of needing to maintain consecutive days of Snapchat “streaks” – the tech giants have made billions out of monopolizing our teenagers’ febrile and fickle minds.

Safeguards designed to filter adult content appear inadequate against the tide of inappropriate material seemingly trying to creep into the average Google search as soon as it’s within reach of a Wi-Fi hot spot.

Last week, a report by Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, found one in 10 children have watched pornography by the time they are aged nine.

Armed with all these horror stats – and personal experience of my own three children seemingly being lobotomized by their devices – I set myself a parenting challenge. For Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week, I persuaded my oldest two to swap their iPhone XRs for basic, old-fashioned “brick” phones, and stick with the Noughties-style contraptions – with no internet connection and just basic access to phone calls, text messages and a camera – for five days.

Suffice to say it would be a while before they would be back to furiously thumbing between apps while inexplicably taking endless pictures of themselves. The phones both had cameras but with what is probably best described as a Betamax filter. It provided them with their first taste of the kind of unflattering photography my Kodak disposable generation was brought up with.

Technological pitfalls aside, however, they surprised me with their willingness to save a few friends in their contacts and get on with it. (The daughter saved several dozen, the son just me, my husband and his bestie.)

Ordinarily, a weekend would see both kids largely confined to their rooms, only venturing out to play football matches and eat endless bowls of cereal.

But without their smartphones to occupy them, they had no choice but to engage in family activities. A whole hour was whiled away mucking around on the trampoline with our youngest, who at age nine doesn’t yet have a smartphone and consequently still enjoys things like board games and arts and crafts. An entire evening was spent watching a film with nobody double screening and having to be reminded of the plot. Everything suddenly became calmer and less stressful. As my husband succinctly put it at the end of day one: “It’s like we’ve got our kids back.”

How to use the old-school mobile phones was, initially at least, confusing for the pair

How to use the old-school mobile phones was, initially at least, confusing for the pair CREDIT: John Lawrence. Yet even more revealingly, they appeared to be enjoying it as much as we were. Annabel commented on how she felt “much more productive” and had got “much more done”, adding: “It’s just so timewasting. You couldn’t name what’s in the last five TikTok videos you’ve watched because it’s all meaningless.”

Harry spoke of his relief at the break from participating in endless group chats. “It’s much easier than I thought it was going to be,” he insisted. “I’m definitely less stressed without social media”.

While they both admitted to suffering from “FOMO” (fear of missing out), they clearly felt encouraged by the fact that the world hadn’t ended simply because they hadn’t racked up their requisite amount of likes. “It’s not like anyone has died,” Annabel pointed out. “It’s made the phone seem more like a luxury than a necessity.” Bingo!

We never allowed phones at the dinner table anyway but with the pesky disturbances locked away, the conversation not only flowed but continued well beyond dessert. Of course, there was still a lot of inter-sibling bickering but without the devices it felt like we were back in the pre-digital era when families actually talked face to face rather than communicating via iMessage, and watched TV together rather than through individual Netflix profiles.

Homework was completed quicker – even without the aid of online calculators and Wikipedia, while they actively sought out early nights, seemingly grateful for the elimination of any nocturnal interruptions. (I had been inconsistent in removing their phones at night but after this, I am going to insist on it despite the inevitable cries of disapproval.)

I’m also going to install regular screen breaks during the weekends and insist that none of us ever watches a film again within reach of a mobile. As well as prompting me to reassess my own excessive phone use (the “it’s for work” excuse has done a lot of heavy lifting since the Government nearly collapsed and Harry and Meghan almost brought down the Royal family), I’m also not going to be rushing to give my youngest a smartphone as soon as she starts secondary school now I’ve realized that it’s logistically not as challenging to communicate with children via brick phones than I first thought.

The other interesting thing was that neither of them once questioned whether they could complete the challenge. So while there is no denying we are all addicted to our phones – adults included – the reassuring aspect of this digital detox was how easy it proved to go cold turkey.

While technology may have changed beyond recognition over the past 20 years – children have remained the same. They may not like to admit it but they still want the grown-ups to set the boundaries. If the majority of teenagers believe they can’t live without their smartphones – it’s up to parents to upload some moderation into their lives.