Letting kids use phones at school is ruining their education and mental health – we must do more to help
FINALLY we see some action.
The Government’s intended ban on mobile phones in school during the day is welcome — but also long overdue.
Education minister Gillian Keegan hit the nail on the head yesterday when she unveiled plans for a ban.
Giving a speech at the Tory party conference in Manchester, she warned: “One of the biggest issues facing our children and teachers is grappling with the impact of smartphones in our schools.
“The distraction, the disruption, the bullying.
“We know that teachers are struggling with their impact and need our support.”
She went on: “The focus should be on children learning in the classroom.”
Hear hear! Smartphones are a plague on children’s lives and stamping them out of schools is a great first step.
We know that their use has been shown to damage concentration.
Get their fix
A Unesco education monitoring report revealed that once a child is disturbed by a notification on their phone they can take up to 20 minutes to refocus on what they were doing before.
The average adolescent now receives an attention-shattering 237 notifications per day.
Other studies looking at countries where mobiles are banned or restricted in schools, such as Malaysia, Singapore, France and parts of Spain, show that academic achievement increases.
And it is not just the child checking their phone, it is the others around them craning their necks to see who said what about whom, to sneak a peek at whatever TikTok video or meme has caught their attention.
We also know that children have become so desperate to keep up with their notifications that — in the many schools which already ban their use during class — trips to the loo have increased.
So not only are they distracted by their phone, they are taking time out of lessons to get their fix.
Mobile phone use has now reached almost blanket coverage for young people, with a 2022 Ofcom report revealing that 91 per cent of children aged 11 own a phone.
Another report by Childwise showed more than half of kids owned a mobile phone by the age of SEVEN.
And of those phones, the vast majority are smartphones, with 60 per cent of eight to 13-year-olds having at least one social media profile.
The time spent on them is also worrying, a staggering average of three hours 20 minutes a day in 2002, which we expect is up to four hours by now.
The ban is also good news for parents, who are becoming more and more worried about their children’s use of smartphones.
After all, it is bad enough when you can see them — but what they get up to when you can’t rightly makes mums and dads nervous.
So many kids have become hooked on devices, not helped by the pandemic, which set an unhelpful precedent where we forced kids more and more into the online world and on to screens.
And there is a darker side to time spent scrolling social media watching TikTok and YouTube videos.
According to broadcast watchdog Ofcom, 80 per cent of children aged seven to 18 experience bullying through phones or laptops.
Children can be cruel enough to each other without the added tools of Whatsapp group chats picking on certain members.
Or worse, direct messages with all manner of intimidation and threats.
What parent has not heard of a child receiving a message along the lines of: “No one likes you”?
How can you possibly concentrate on school work — or indeed anything else — when processing that?
It’s no wonder mental health problems are growing among young people.
Of course, some schools have already effectively banned their use.
But so far it has been very much a Wild West situation, where schools were left largely to do what they want when it comes to controlling the use of devices.
Some ask kids to hand in their phones at the start of the school day and they are returned only after the final lesson.
Parents’ responsibility
Many simply ban their use during the day, dishing out detentions for illicit use.
But too many still allow them to be used during break times and lunch, which still stops children living in the moment and socialising.
However, though a ban in schools is a step in the right direction — it is only that — a step.
For many kids, once the school bell rings and it’s home time, the phones are out again.
I am not saying children should never have phones, but the reality is that the addictive-by-design smartphone exposes children to an array of unsuitable content and stops them living their lives in the moment.
If kids must have phones then we ought to be looking at a device that has the basics — text and call, maps and some apps such as banking and travel.
And, of course, parents have a responsibility, too, both to limit our kids’ use and also our own.
How can we expect children to put down their devices when we are glued to them all day?
The battle to protect children from the dangers of smartphones is far from won.
But making schools safer places by stopping their use there is a good first step.
- Molly Kingsley is the founder of grassroots volunteer children’s interests campaign group UsForThem.