Eoin Thornton: My child doesn't use tech — but in school, it's embedded despite the harms

When cybersecurity expert Eoin Thornton's daughter started school, he assumed parents would have to consent to smart devices in the classroom. Two years on, he's learned they have no say despite departmental policy 

Why are parents being told to reduce children's digital exposure at home while the education system increases it at school? 

Smart devices and online platforms have recently become embedded in primary education, exposing children to documented risks spanning learning, attention, wellbeing, privacy and development — risks increasingly recognised in international research. 

Yet parents were never informed of these risks, never consulted before their introduction, and never asked to consent. So who has accepted these risks on behalf of our children — and what happens when parents say no?

For more than 25 years, I have worked within the cybersecurity industry, helping organisations understand the risks of adopting new technologies. 

One principle underpins every major technology decision: identify the risks, explain them transparently and obtain approval from those responsible for accepting them. We expect that standard across all societal sectors. Yet when it comes to some of the most vulnerable people in society — our youngest children — something very different appears to have happened.

Across Ireland, smart devices are quietly becoming normalised in primary school classrooms. Not as an optional subject or pilot programme that parents can choose to join. But increasingly as a delivery mechanism for education itself. The risks come with them. But the conversation with parents did not, despite the department explicitly directing schools to consult their school communities, including parents.

What makes this particularly difficult to reconcile is the warnings could hardly be clearer. The Department of Education is telling parents to delay personal smart devices for their children. The Department of Health has warned of digital harms to children, with the minister for health calling it a “public health crisis”, and the chief medical officer saying evidence increasingly showed negative impacts of the digital world could be “devastating and long-lasting”. 

Webwise tells parents to limit screen time, restrict device use and protect children from persuasive technologies designed to capture their attention. Robust 2025 OECD research, used to inform public policy, documents extensive risks to learning, attention, wellbeing, privacy and development from digital technology in education.

The risks from the OECD research extend far beyond “screen time” or “social-media”. They include digital distraction, reduced focus and engagement, poorer learning outcomes from inappropriate or non-educational use, device dependency, cyberbullying, online-safety and privacy concerns, inequality, and the consequences of technology being introduced without sufficient teacher competence, appropriate safeguards or effective oversight. 

The research stresses successful digital education depends on thoughtful integration, robust policies, stakeholder engagement and continuous evaluation.

Given my cybersecurity background, the last point is particularly striking. No responsible organisation deploys technology simply because it offers benefits. We identify the risks, assess their likelihood and impact, put controls around them, monitor what happens after deployment and establish who has authority to accept the residual risk. 

When the people exposed to that risk are children, the standard should surely be higher, not lower. It’s worth noting it also highlights social media use during school as a form of non-educational use associated with distraction and poorer academic performance.

These are not speculative concerns. In November 2023, our school asked parents to collectively agree to delay purchasing smart devices for our children while in primary school. It spoke of “mounting evidence of the detrimental effects this technology has on the developing brain, especially on children under the age of 14 — socially, emotionally and educationally”. 

It spoke of children “not being emotionally ready to manoeuvre a smart device”. The code was being introduced to “help remove the obstacle of smart devices at primary level” and was described as “very important to safeguard our children”.

We are living through a profound contradiction in modern parenting. During the hours children spend in school, technology is becoming normalised and increasingly integral to classroom life and, disturbingly, it appears there is no meaningful opt-out option if you want your child to have an education.

Do the underlying risks disappear when a child walks through the school gate?

Who concluded that the educational benefits outweigh the documented risks? Who accepted those risks on behalf of the parents of over half a million children? Who decided informed parental consent was unnecessary? 

Why are parents being told to reduce children's digital exposure at home while the education system increases it at school? 

Surely our children deserve consistency and the same standard of transparency, accountability and informed consent that we expect everywhere else when technology has the potential to shape people's lives.

In January 2025, when smart devices were introduced into our daughter's classroom, we told the school clearly: we did not consent to these risks for our six-year-old child. Requests to inform parents of the risks being introduced and consult with them were refused.

So we surveyed the class parents ourselves.

When a majority voted to remove smart devices from their child’s classroom, the results were rejected, as were repeated requests for the board of management to conduct its own survey. No school-led consultation with parents followed.

Then came the moment that crystallised everything.

On the same day our formal complaint was closed by the board of management, we received a photograph from the school of our daughter in her classroom, sitting beneath the teacher's interactive display which was streaming content from a social media platform.

And this was happening as the evidence around children's exposure to social media was becoming impossible to ignore. In March 2026, this same social media company was found liable in a landmark case concerning harm associated with addictive platform design and childhood use.

Against that backdrop, a communication from our own school reported “a noticeable increase in children presenting with anxiety, school refusal, dysregulation and other issues requiring immediate intervention”. Those are the school's words, not mine. They should sound the alarm. Who is monitoring? Who is investigating? At what point does precaution become the responsible response?

For the past 12 months, we have taken this issue as far as parents reasonably can: to successive ministers for education, the Educate Together National Office, and the Ombudsman for Children. We asked for help, mediation and, above all, someone to take responsibility. 

Instead, we have repeatedly been directed back to the same board of management that has already closed our complaint and declined further engagement on a solution. If nobody has the authority — or willingness — to intervene when parents believe their children are being exposed to unacceptable risk, then who exactly is accountable for protecting these children?

Our child knows her parents have said no. She has also said no. She knows the school has taken a different position. And she knows she is the child caught in the crossfire. She has described being segregated and isolated from her classmates within the classroom while technology is being used.

She is carrying a burden no child should be asked to carry. She has told us she is sad and feels she has done something wrong. Do we need to remove our child from mainstream primary education to protect her from harm?

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

All we are asking is that our decision as her parents be respected. We chose a school whose stated values include child-centred education, democracy and active parental participation. How is what we are experiencing compatible with those values? And if parents are entitled to say no, why is nobody listening when they do?

Who accepted these risks on behalf of our children, and what happens when parents say no? Twenty months later, the first remains unanswered. Our daughter is living the consequences of the second.

• Eoin Thornton works in cybersecurity. He has one daughter