COMMUNITY ACTION WITH SMARTPHONE FREE CHILDHOOD HITCHIN
OUR HITCHIN KIDS SURVEY 2025 - THE FINDINGS
In May 2025, Insight Angels conducted and analysed a survey on behalf of the Smartphone Free Childhood Hitchin movement - bringing our insight experience to bear in a much more localised context than usual! Working with local parents and schools, the survey was pushed out via multiple routes and achieved impressive levels of engagement with over 1,000 responses from the community.
The focus was on understanding smartphone and social media use among children in the town, along with the concerns that parents have around this, with the explicit intention of using these insights to effect local change. Scroll through the presentation below, or access the dashboard beneath it, to take a look at what we’ve learnt.
In a nutshell, Hitchin parents are increasingly concerned about online bullying and access to inappropriate or extreme content. Encouragingly, a considerable number of children in Year 6 are now receiving basic “brick” phones, countering the established rite of passage to have a smartphone going into secondary school. This is testament to a great deal of local engagement work and heightened awareness of key issues in the last 18 months.
Based on these insights a number of actions are being progressed locally, including:
Informing parents of reception-year children about the Smartphone Free Childhood movement and parent pact to delay access to smartphones
Sharing information on alternative devices, particularly for parents of children in Years 3-6
Working with secondary schools to ensure consistent and effective smartphone policies are in place
Note, Smartphone Free Childhood Hitchin is an independent, self-governing, self-organising group, inspired by the Smartphone Free Childhood movement. Smartphone Free Childhood is not involved in its governance, content, events or data.
