Child drownings in Germany linked to parents' phone ‘fixation’

Lifeguards warn parents to put phones away, after more than 300 people drowned this year

German lifeguards have issued a warning that a growing number of child drownings this summer are linked to their parents’ obsession with mobile phones.

More than 300 people have drowned in Germany this year, with hardly a day passing during the current heatwave when a swimmer has not died.

The German Lifeguard Association (DLRG) – the biggest organisation of its kind in the world, providing 40,000 volunteer lifeguards at German beaches, lakes and the coast – has made a direct connection between children getting into difficulty in the water and parents being too busy on their mobile phones to notice.

“Too few parents and grandparents are heeding the advice: when your children and grandchildren are in the water, put your smartphone away,” Achim Wiese, the DLRG’s spokesman, said.

“We’re experiencing on a daily basis that people treat swimming pools like a kindergarten and simply don’t pay attention,” added Peter Harzheim of the German federation of swimming pool supervisors.

“In the past, parents and grandparents spent more time with their children in the swimming pool. But increasing numbers of parents are fixated by their smartphones and are not looking left or right, let alone paying attention to their children,” he told German media. “It’s sad that parents behave so neglectfully these days.”

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But the organisations have also blamed the school system for not making swimming lessons obligatory from an early age. Budget cuts have also led to swimming pools shortening their opening times.

An increase in the number of families in which both parents worked full-time has led to difficulties for families to fit in swimming lessons, the DLRG has warned.

In the past week alone, drownings across the country have made headline news, including that of a seven-year-old boy who died at a pool in the Bavarian town of Marktredwitz. In Münster a man died after jumping into a canal in order to cool off.

Among the drownings have been more than 20 children under the age of 15, and 40 young women and men between the ages of 16 and 25. Older people are also seen to be at particular risk when they swim too far and run out of energy, the experts have warned.

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The German Swimming Association (DSV) has warned that with a lack of state support for swimming lessons, and schools’ lack of access to pools, Germany is in danger of turning into a land of non-swimmers.

“As a result, many people lack the right knowledge about how to behave in the water,” the DSV’s Axel Dietrich told German media.

“So people have drowned this summer in particular because they knew nothing about the water temperatures and the currents in the particular water they’ve been in, or because they suddenly got a cramp in their leg in the middle of a lake and had no idea what to do.”