The Attention Revolution, an Israeli initiative to curb child and teen smartphone use, has been spreading across the country in recent years, with the goal of involving around one in 10 schoolchildren within the next two years.
“The Attention Revolution is trying to rebuild the relationship between people and digital technology,” Attention Revolution CEO Asaf Banner told The Jerusalem Post.
Banner spoke to the Post at one of the elementary schools in Tel Aviv participating in the initiative. “Cell phones are great, and technology is amazing, but we have lost our balance, and we are trying to bring it back,” he said.
Banner said the initiative, which is growing “rapidly, sevenfold” in recent years, works through the mechanism of a social contract between parents on a class-by-class level.
At the same time, the initiative is simultaneously supported by the municipalities, communities, and schools.
Social contract outlines terms on technology use
“We work with local communities around Israel and with schools, and we try to build a new norm around how to use digital technology and when children should start using it,” he said. “The pendulum has started moving.”
The individual points of the social contract, which Banner noted would be agreed upon by 70% or 80% of the parents of a given class, would outline terms such as the age at which children in that class would get their first smartphone and which apps would be allowed on those phones.
“Is there going to be WhatsApp? Is there going to be social media or not? These are the norms that are built by the parents that regard the kids,” he explained.
According to information provided by the movement, the initiative has been working with nearly a dozen municipalities across the country, including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Herzliya, and operating in 96 elementary schools and 49 secondary schools.
Together, the schools it works with serve approximately 77,500 students, the Attention Revolution said.
“Kids are getting their phones too soon. Kids are getting addicted to using social media or using their phones,” Banner noted, adding that “unbalanced use of social media or smartphones can cause severe harm.”
Ample data supports the assertion.
One study, “Smartphone Ownership, Age of Smartphone Acquisition, and Health Outcomes in Early Adolescence,” published early this year in the academic journal Pediatrics, found that among 12-year-olds, smartphone owners were more likely to experience mental health issues such as depression.
They were also more prone to obesity and less likely to get sufficient amounts of sleep.
Another study, “The Association Between Social Media Addiction and Aggressive Behaviors: A Longitudinal and Gender-Specific Analysis,” published in the Journal of Adolescence in late 2024, found a relationship between social media addiction and aggression in children.
Also speaking at the north Tel Aviv elementary school, Danna, a mother of three, said that her kids spend more time being bored, but that “this is a great thing.”
“Kids need to be bored a little bit, and after the boredom comes the activity,” she said. “We see them thinking: ‘What can we do to step out of this boredom?’”
Boredom results in creative activity
As a result, she said, they engage in more creative activities than phone use, such as selling toys, reading books, or playing board games.
“We see the negative impacts that having a smartphone has on developing minds,” she told the Post.
“Whether it’s from inappropriate content exposure, sexual or violent content, difficult social comparisons that cause body image issues, [or] social issues that happen in social media and in WhatsApp groups, we’re trying to avoid all that until they’re at a stage where they’re much more developmentally ready to handle those things.”
While the Attention Revolution movement is growing around the country, one of the initiative’s largest municipal partners is Tel Aviv.
Yael Shmueli, the Attention Revolution’s Tel Aviv Elementary Schools Program coordinator, oversees an expanding number of schools in the city that have chosen to participate.
“I coordinate the initiative across 30 elementary schools in the city: 14 schools in their first year of the program and 16 schools in their second or third year,” she told the Post.
Shmueli, who previously spent a decade working for Meta, said that the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality has been an important partner in the organization’s work.
“We meet with the municipal team every week and work together on questions such as how to engage more parents, strengthen participation, and create continuity within each school community,” she said.
Going forward, she added, the goal is not just about reaching more schools.
“The central goal is to help schools implement the charters they have created with parents so that the agreements gradually become community norms rather than remaining documents that were published once and then forgotten.”
Her experience at Meta, she said, makes her work with the Attention Revolution particularly meaningful. While digital technology makes new levels of connection possible, it can also “draw our attention away from the people who are physically beside us, particularly when using it becomes an automatic response to boredom rather than a conscious choice,” she concluded.
Source:
www.jpost.com
