Are there any parents out there who support smartphones in schools?

They get this in pshe now. I think parents need to educate themselves, though. Some of them really don't understand what their children ger up to.

Why is she in the streets in the daytime?
Is this in the UK?

Ours has pouches to lock them in as they go into school and unlock them as they come out. I think that should be done in every school, they need them for walking home (my DD has phoned before when she tripped and hurt her ankle so needed collecting partway home) but definitely don't need to be glued to them when they should be socialising on breaks or videoing bullying etc.

As a teachers I’m torn. I worry the genie is out of the bottle. There are so many helpful and positive uses for their phone, photographing work, checking timetables, quick access to quizzes.

However, many kids show elements of screen addiction and will constantly ask to go to the loo to get in their phone. Many issues we have with bullying, inappropriate photos and videos all happen in a school where phone should be seen and not heard. They’re rare thankfully but parents do insist we follow up comments and issues made on Snap/whatsapp etc.

My overriding feeling they should be handed in and locked away in the morning and handed back at the end of the day. It would also help us keep students in their after school detention if we had their phone until 4.30. Many parents won’t support this though.

That's a very good point on smartphone education lessons. Not something I'd thought about but absolutely Yes.

And what to do and what not to do if they are sent inappropriate photos.

I went to school 20 miles away and there was no public transport within 3 miles of my house. There were pay phones (with the reverse charge number) which are few & far between, but we managed.

Missed trains meant finding a phone and reversing the charges if you didn’t have money. The guard would let you on and take your details for someone to buy a ticket later.

None of that happens now because we have mobiles - if kids no longer have them, then bus companies will have to change their systems away from digital passes and introduce better ways to deal with stranded kids.

If parents refuse to buy smart phones you can bet your ass the tech companies will build dumb phones with trackers or limited wallets inside them.

But unless we collectively say no to smart phones for kids, they will continue to sling us harmful tech at outrageous prices.

Calling mum at least enables Mum to arrange a taxi to get her to school or leave work and get her or get a friend to help her out.

Admittedly the bus driver shouldn't have left her, especially as it was school transport. He should have sorted the ticket situation once they got to school.

But ultimately things happens, transport goes wrong. Roads get closed. Parents get held up.
The very first day back at school the road between school and the village was closed for hours due to an accident.
So ALL the buses were off. Kids were left to deal with the situation themselves, including kids in first year barely knowing their way round the school never mind getting themselves home.

People have issues with "phones" what they really have an issue with is social media.

I do think people look at the past with rose tinted glasses.

There wasn't phone boxes "everywhere". They were in places with a lot of people. I had a 40 minute journey to school (10 minute walk, 25 minutes bus, 5 minute walk). The only phone box in that whole time was near the school.

And who to ring? Unless you had a stay at home parent... they would be at work, or on the way to work. If they worked in an office, they might have a phone you could ring.

We learnt to be self sufficient because we had to.

Mobile phones started to become more mainstream when I was in Secondary school. I can remember the one time my Dad phoned me on it, 10 minutes after school. September 11th, 2001, with the message to go straight home and to tell my friends to do the same (we lived in London).

Saying that, I do think mobiles do make life a lot easier. There is just no need for the vast majority to use them during the school day.

Except it isn’t good for your brain at all.

Social media isn’t relaxing, it doesn’t help your brain ‘switch off’ or any of the other things downtime should be.

It’s designed to keep you scrolling, consuming the adverts and getting the repeated highs that lead to addiction.

It’s really, really bad for downtime.

You can get little clips that go on your bra to remember the boob you used.

I also used a bf app because I liked the data and what it told me - but I am an adult with a brain formed without smartphones and social media.

Smartphones make lots of things easier - but there is very little that can’t be done in a different way.

Bf - get a clip for your bra and/or a notebook to write down the info

travel chaos - dumb phones text and call

Pictures of science experiments - digital camera that requires downloading and printing or emailing rather than instant sharing

People managed without phones

Because there were phone boxes everywhere. This has been already stated.

I rarely see a public phone these days, and an unvandalised one is even rarer.

And what about the friends whose lessons she is interrupting with messages?

This has to be a wind up.

No one wants their kid to be so needy they have to be able to message friends in the 2 hours between breaks at school.

As I said, I don't know the exact situation. There's always a way tho. It was not a life or death moment I'm sure.

People managed without phones. It might be difficult and uncomfortable but that's exactly what's needed to grow up.

How does calling mum help?

Yeah, because big tech is famously well regulated, isn’t it?

Don’t be so naive.

Look who say where at Trump’s inauguration and ask yourself who is really in charge.

Smartphones and social media are horrific for mental health, attention and brain development.

Almost none of the examples on this thread (except the diabetes monitoring) require anything more than a dumb phone and a digital
camera.

Children should be able to make mistakes and be idiots without it being recorded forever and shared around at school.

They should be able to read and explore the world without everything being spoon fed to them in 30 second videos that damage their attention span and mis-wire their dopamine systems.

An 8 year old recently ran up thousands of £ of debt on You Tube because her ridiculous parents gave her an iPhone and no oversight. Some parents can’t be trusted to stick with the current (inadequate) rules, let alone understand the acute, insidious dangers of tech.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia

https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/03/our-eight-year-old-daughter-spent-over-8500-on-the-apple-app-store

Those are unrealistic and unworkable.
My friend's DD went to school 18 miles away. Walking home was not an option.

Do you really think a child would and could ask a stranger for money?

If the neighbours were mumsnetters they won't answer the door anyway.

The friends had already left and gone home.

You can't turn the clock back for money and the key.

I dont know the exact situation but any combination of the following-

Borrow money off a friend
Borrow money off a stranger
Not forget money in first place
Not forget key in first place
Knock on neighbors door for help
Walk to school ( be very late )
Go back home and climb over fence to try back door
Etc etc

Whatever way, lessons will be learnt, and resilience built.

Also, how does calling mum help?

Im all for phones in schools - it was the ONLY way my DD could get actual help at the height of being bullied. Help being picked up or just someone to vent to

The teachers did nothing, not even call us when she was physically attacked or told to off herself

For us it was a safety thing, she wasnt safe there and needed a phone for protection. She was ONLY bullied in person on school grounds, none online as she hadnt added anyone but her 2 close friends and had all profiles locked down

It got so bad we now homeschool but i will ALWAYS defend a kid having a phone in school. Any school that says they dont need it for safety is lying through their teeth, likely cos they dont want the extent of the bullying to go public - as was the case with DD old school

A phone is a parents choice NOT the schools

I don’t really have an issue with phones in bags at school.

Well if the suggestion is kids shouldn't have phone, how are they met to get in touch?

Not so much when they are in school but en-route too and from?

People also have to keep in mind millions of kids live between 2 houses and probably have grandparents care thrown in too. Not everyone even has landlines these days.
Kids aren't necessarily going home to the same house they left in the morning.

Life organisation is more complicated than it was for many in the 1980.

There is a middle ground.

My 10 year old has a Nokia dumb phone.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting we go back to pay phones in the street 😂

The issue is not phones, the issue is social media. And people need to separate the two issues.

We aren't going back to having payphones on the streets, the few that remain are likely to disappear in the next few years as they turn off the copper telephone exchanges.

My secondary had a pay phone in the waiting area at the office. I don't ever remember using it but it was there.

Just the same as I passed about 4 seperate phone boxes or sets of boxes and a couple of shops with payphones on the way home.

But as a mid teen, I started a part-time job at 16, I would regularly call home to say what train I'd be on. I also called taxis from the same payphone, " can I get a taxi to meet me off x train" I even used to carry a phonecard because many people would que for the coin phone while the card phone was empty.

But we are in a time when parents might not be home, or they might have arranged to collect kids en-route home and things can and do go wrong.

I don't recognise this at all. No payphones in my school. I went to uni when mobiles were rare & we used the landline in shared flats then argued about the itemised bill - definitely not a lot of calls home.

In the 80s we had pay phones in the stairwells at school, and phone boxes on most main streets. The ones at school were pretty much constantly in use during breaks.

I would guess I phoned home, or to my parents work, about once a week to change plans for after school or similar. Most friends were about the same.