Parents in Greystone, County Wicklow near Dubln have agreed to not supply their young children with a device after St Patrick's National School headteacher Rachel Harper noticed that anxiety levels in children was incredibly "high" when they used a smartphone.

Speaking on UK TV show 'This Morning', she explained: "I would meet the kids in the morning at the school gate just getting to know them and I could see an increase in anxiety levels even in children coming through the school gate. Around the age of eight or nine...speaking to parents, there was high anxiety at night. And talking to teachers as well about what's happening in classrooms. I reached out, we have a great community, with seven other principals and asked if they were seeing something similar, and they were. So we identified the problem there.

"So we sent out questionnaires to all the teachers and parents and the information that came back was amazing, and that was the first stage of breaking down the walls and getting parents talking."

Rachel explained that before implementing the ban, she gathered the town together for a meeting and now the area has monthly gatherings to discuss various issues in the community.

She said: "We had a town meeting...we all came together to think about what we could do. We have monthly talks for the parents covering different topics. When we were doing all this community side of things, we were thinking about the areas that feed into anxiety and we all felt that the smartphones and Internet usage was a huge part of it.

"One of the schools had already started rolling out the ban and we decided to make it into the new norm in our area. The first thing we did was send out an email. We were looking at children's wellbeing so so I think that's how it landed well."