A Different View with Dave O’Connell

he irony of youngsters looking for expensive mobiles almost as soon as they can walk and talk is that the last thing they’re actually looking for is a phone; have you ever tried getting one of them to answer it when you’re looking for them?

What they actually want is a games console-cum-entertainment system that fits in their pocket along with access to a whole range of social media apps – or Instagram at the very least – with perhaps Spotify or any music streaming service thrown in.

Ideally, they’d like this to be in situ by the time they’re nine or ten, but at the very latest they need them in time for their First Holy Communion.

When you were born in an era when not every house even had a landline, let alone everyone living in it having their own phone, all of this can see a little strange.

And yet the fig leaf of justification we’ve all used in the face of accusatory eyebrows raised in our direction is that we bought the phones so we could always contact the mites when they’re out and about.

The truth is that they’re never ‘out and about’ on their own at the tender age they want their phones, and if they were itself, they’d never hear or answer you.

Time was when buying a mobile for a kid involved a trip to Mothercare to get one of those colourful revolving things that you stuck over the cot. Now it’s a visit to a mobile phone shop.

Thankfully Galway city seems to have a planning policy of ensuring every second outlet on Shop Street is a phone shop, although the vape sellers are not taking this lying down.

But as Bob Dylan once said, the times, they are a-changing – thanks to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly who wants to ban smartphone use for under16s.

And that’s after Minister for Education Norma Foley’s recent proposal to ban smartphones in all primary and secondary schools.

Some schools have already taken this into their own hands by making students cough up their phones during teaching hours and putting them in transparent, locked units until it’s time to go home.

There are undoubtedly good reasons for this – not least social media bullying or phones distracting from what’s actually happening in school – but this is closing the stable door after the horse has well and truly bolted.