Experts recommend bath ban for cell phone parents

According to an expert, swimming pools are facing a growing problem with parents who are distracted by their smartphones and do not supervise their children sufficiently. Therefore, pools across the country have already issued stay-at-home orders for one or more days, said Erik Voss, training director of the German Bathing Society. During his training sessions, he advises to warn parents who are inattentive on cell phones once and to expel them from the swimming pool if it happens again. This falls under the staff’s house rules.

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The “Bild” newspaper previously reported on such cases from Hamburg swimming pools. The expert who trains pool staff across the country said that, as far as he knows, stay-at-home restrictions have also been imposed in Mönchengladbach, Leipzig, Freiburg and Worms. The problems of parents distracted by cell phones have been growing for about two years, he said. “It’s not a matter of five minutes. The child stands with the swimming master for three and a quarter hours and no one misses him.”

“It’s a matter of life or death for the children,” he said. The children could drown in a very short time. A complete ban on cell phones in the bathroom cannot be enforced. “Then we would have no customers.” However, swimming pool owners advertise with posters that people should put their cell phones in their pockets and go into the water with their children. According to its own information, the German Society for the Bathing Industry, based in Essen, represents about 1,000 pool operators in Germany.

(Mac)