For months, my kids have been telling me to cut down on my phone use. My 6-year-old daughter created a reward chart for the nights I left my devices downstairs. Once you have 7 stickers, she will write a poem or draw a picture for you. For her and her 9-year-old brother, there is no debate that excessive smartphone use is now a bad thing.
They haven’t had much of an opinion on all this so far. I am convinced that this change is a result of the changes seen at a private junior to senior school in south London, which banned the use of smartphones in class following a discussion that parents, including myself, initiated in March. I am. .
At the time, it felt like Britain was at the forefront of a global movement to protect children from the dangers of smartphones and social media. The grassroots movement Smartphone Free Childhood was launched in February, with thousands of parents signing up to its mission and lobbying schools and governments for change.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak at the time said he was considering banning smartphones for under-16s. In May, a report by the House of Commons Education Committee urged the next government to introduce a ban. Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation, published in April, is a book that explores the link between smartphones and poor childhood mental health, and suddenly it’s all over the place, with national newspapers urging legal reform. Cited in dozens of articles.
But the Labor government announced this week that it would not pursue an outright legal ban because headteachers “already have the power to ban phones”.
This is wrong. A national survey of parents released this week found that one in seven children still spend more than seven hours a day using electronic devices, which is more time than they actually spend at school. Can you imagine that 1 in 7 of them attends a school that doesn’t enforce campus curfews?
After other parents and I asked the school to make changes, the school introduced a lockable pouch to keep cell phones in throughout the school day. Children will hand it in on arrival and collect it at the end of the day. And severe sanctions were imposed on those who ignored the rules. . The results were amazing. Teachers report feeling much more at ease, focusing better at school, and parents noticing less smartphone use at home. One friend said that since the ban, her 15-year-old daughter’s mindset has completely changed, going from spending more than an hour on her phone to less than 30 minutes a day.
Not only is the immediate restriction of the ban important, but also the message we send to the next generation. A strict ban indicates that excessive use of the phone is not normal. A friend’s daughter picked this up. I noticed this with my own children who no longer looked at their phones on school grounds. And this is what children in non-banned schools do not learn.
The government is worried that between new online safety laws due to come into force next year (which will require more efforts from tech companies to protect young people) and the fact that schools already have the power to ban mobile phones themselves, He claims there is no need. But my own experience tells me otherwise. For parents and schools, it is actually very difficult to combat the deeply ingrained feeling that phones are normal and permanently integrated into everyday life.
Before all of this happened, my children’s school technically prohibited the use of phones in school, but there were caveats and no strict enforcement. Mobile phones were used in class. To their dismay, they were often seen on the playground. When momentum was building in March, we noted one study in particular by a nonprofit organization about the link between smartphone use and anxiety, loss of focus, online stranger danger and bullying. I sent a carefully written email to the principal with ten news links. The research organization Sapiens Lab has concluded unequivocally that the younger you are when you receive your first smartphone, the worse your mental health is.
But it wasn’t easy. It took coffee mornings, research and difficult discussions before the school reached its conclusion. Our school also takes into account a number of things that I frankly did not expect, such as how much older children use their cell phones to check train timetables. I needed to. To compensate, we had to reintroduce hard copy school timetables and introduce access to train timetables in the school atrium. It took considerable effort to encourage change. Without legislation, I fear many schools will not implement the changes.
In the absence of a government initiative, Labor MP John McAllister this week announced plans to ban smartphone use in schools and change the way social media that provides addictive content will make “doomscrolling” less effective for children. A private member’s bill has been introduced that would introduce changes that would make it more difficult. Some MPs, including Health Secretary Wes Streeting, agree the debate is important. But in practice, backbencher bills are rarely successful. It all feels a little weak and disappointing.
Meanwhile, other countries are following suit. Australia last year banned smartphones in state schools and is currently drafting legislation that would ban children under 16 from accessing social media. New York Governor Kathy Hochul plans to introduce a bill that would ban smartphones in schools. And in France, a “pause numérique” (digital pause) trial bans the use of smartphones in all 180 schools for children aged 11 to 15.
For a moment, it looked like Britain was going to lead the charge in all this. Well, it looks like we’re going to be left behind.
