‘It took me years to realise the damage’: Adelaide mum-of-six explains her dramatic reversal on phones for her kids
Jacqie Jones tells why she’s completely changed her approach to digital parenting for her six kids – after seeing what unrestricted phone use did to her older children.
An Adelaide mum-of-six has made a dramatic U-turn on mobile phones, ditching the “no-rules” approach she took for her oldest two children a decade ago and bringing in a strict ban for her youngest ones.
Jacqie Jones said she adopted a “willy-nilly” approach to digital use for her oldest children, now aged 22 and 19, who mostly played computer games on laptops that were “easy to put away and would go with us everywhere”.
But now the 40-year-old has strict rules for her youngest boys, aged eight and 10, who will have to wait until they start high school before they receive a phone – and it will be a “dumb”, cheap version that they will have to surrender as soon as they get home.
“It took me years to realise how much damage the phones were doing,” says Ms Jones, who runs her own cake-decorating business from her Hackham West home.
“The difference between the way I approached mobile phones with my eldest and now is massive. My two youngest boys don’t have a phone, a lot of their friends at school do. The 10-year-old’s been begging and I’m like ‘not happening, bro’.
“He will get one for high school because I work, he will need one, but it won’t be a smart phone, it will just be a $50 Woolies phone. And I’ve decided it will be a school phone so it goes to school with you and when you get home, it goes on charge in my room.”
Ms Jones’s evolutionary change of heart comes as the federal government introduces its new social media ban for Australians aged under 16.
She is a big supporter of the new legislation, which she says will provide “back-up” for her strong new position with her youngest.
“I will be the ‘hands-up’ mum, I’ll be able to say ‘sorry but it’s against the law’,” she says.
“There’ll be no negotiations, I wish I knew sooner to do this. If I could go and take the phones away all together, if they were illegal, I would be okay with that.”
Ms Jones says she was naive with her first two children and took a “hands-off” approach to their digital use.
“I don’t remember when my oldest child got a mobile phone, it just feels like they always had one,” she says.
“There was no heavy watching from me – I’m not a tech-savvy person. I told them about being safe … but there were no restrictions.”
She says she then “dropped the ball” with her middle two children, now 17 and 13, who have been very connected to their phones.
“Everything is on mobile phones. Their sporting clubs use apps for fixtures and information, it’s their whole life,” she says.
When the law changes on December 10, Ms Jones expects her underage 13-year-old daughter to “find a way” to keep access to her social media accounts despite having to legally surrender them because she is still under-16.
“I’m being realistic,” she says.
“They’ll work out a way, they always do. It will turn into a daily fight … you feel like the bad guy all the time.
“I like the idea, it sounds great, but I know she’ll find a way.”
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Originally published as ‘It took me years to realise the damage’: Adelaide mum-of-six explains her dramatic reversal on phones for her kids
