Rape culture starts in primary school

I don’t know if people already know about this, but in case not, the idea of this pact from Smart Phone Free Childhood is to form large enough groups of children who do not have smart phones so that the peer pressure to have one is less strong.
parentpactresults.smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/

My son is in year 7 and has a Nokia dumbphone for calling home because his school insists on it. It doesn't have a camera and there's no data to go online. He won't be getting a smartphone until he's a lot older. A lot of the parents in his school feel exactly the same about smartphones, and he's never been teased, as none of his classmates ever bring them in.

That's really interesting, WarriorN - you could have got your DCs expensive smartphones with all the consequent dangers, because 'they all have them' and 'they need them for safety' and 'the other kids will tease them ' and all the other mantras about giving smartphones to under-16s.

Not only have they got by without a smartphone, it looks like they got by without even using the Nokias!

So perhaps kids do actually have enough inner resources not to be glued to a phone at every free moment... yours obviously do WarriorN👌

Unfettered access to pornography and social media is the worst thing to happen to young girls in the last couple of decades.

Boys have their brains fried with hardcore porn, girls are pushed hard to sexualise themselves from a young age. But then every moron will harp on about ethical pornography and social media training, because a bandaid is easier than actually enforcing a solution

@RedToothBrush said:

"Why does football have hooliganism when other very masculine sports don't? That's the type of question you should ask...

...the answer comes back to tribalism and power every single time."

Great post generally, but especially the above bit. I remember, pre-Mumsnet, discussions about how marvellous football was at inspiring team spirit, the ability of groups of kids to work together for a common good, etc. However, someone else pointed out that the main point of football was to beat the shit out of the other team, (Plus, possibly, their supporters.) They politely suggested that if peeps wanted kids to learn team spirit, work together for a common good, etc., those kids should join a bloody orchestra. Less tribalism there... 😀

Great points, Whatthechicken, I hadn't thought about 'independence' = 'dependent on smartphone'.

I love your last sentence:
a phone won’t stop your kid getting kidnapped or run over, but teaching how to keep themselves safe may do.

Adults should think that way too - if there's a prolonged power cut, and your only means of comms is your smartphone, and the battery runs out, what is your Plan B for emergency calls??

[Hint: hang on to your landline if you have one, and keep a cheap 'Nokia' powered up as it will hold its charge for days till the leccy comes back on. But make sure it's an up-to-date one, at least 4g, because 3g, which Nokias tootled along on nicely, is being discontinued.]

Oh and by the way, Whatthechicken, word on the street is that Nokias are cool again, Gen Z likes them, so your kids are trendsetters😎
Why Gen-Z is going back to dumb phones in 2025 | body+soul

Small point about smartphones. My kids are 9 and 10, so we are right in the thrust of ‘everyone else has a smart phone, why can’t we?’ They are not getting a smart phone for as long as I can manage, we have a ‘house mobile’, which can be used by the 10 year old if he leaves school on his own to go to the village park for 15 mins. It’s a call and text phone only. He did get the mick taken out of him for it.

I understand why parents feel more comfortable with their child having a phone as they take their first tentative steps to independence, but what I have noticed is that the phone seems to have replaced teaching kids how to keep themselves safe. I have witnessed many children who don’t know how to navigate roads, I’m not sure that many would be able to risk assess situations, what to do if their friend gets hurt, who to ask for help. I think the phone seems to have become a false safety blanket.

The first few times my son went to the park, we did it without a phone. He was drilled and tested over what to do in various situations. The kids with smart phones make it to the park, but do tend to sit on the swings scrolling. My belief is that a phone won’t stop your kid getting kidnapped or run over, but teaching how to keep themselves safe may do.

Actually rape culture starts at conception - so many men sharing vile views on women and then starting families with unsuspecting women.

People need to stop giving their primary age children mobile/smart phones.

Unfortunately this.

Children who are abusive are almost always coming from very troubled homes.

Smartphones would be a convenient scapegoat, but would not address the underlying issues.

A proportion of children in every school will be neglected, abused, facing difficulties at home. This has never changed.

Addressing and reversing growing poverty and inequality, the slashing of services to address wider social issues, are the things that may help.

A huge task.

This is a thread I often recall.

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3364173-Our-kids-were-raped-by-classmates-DfE-wont-listen

This is 21st century parenting and culture.

Yes and no. Using smartphones pocket computers to make child sexual abuse easier and available in more variants (e.g. solicitation of CSA images, which is what "nudes" are when the subject is a child) is 21st century. Child sexual abuse is every century. I was sexually-assaulted aged eight at school by older boys, and that was last century.

This is not about the school - this is the children. This is the boys. There were two sexual incidents in my DCs school at primary. One boy committed the same act in the same year, he was moved on.

This is 21st century parenting and culture.

Don't apologise for being right.

If your child doesn't have a camera-equipped, Internet-connected phone and is only allowed tablets or laptops in the living room with an adult supervising, your child can't be groomed in her own bedroom.

A "smartphone" is not actually a phone, it is an Internet-connected pocket computer. I think that parents don't realise this. The same parents who recognise the need to PIN lock the "adult" channels on the TV and set up filters on the broadband don't realise that a child can access the dark web and bully or be bullied over Whatsapp/Kik/Signal/IRC/etc using a pocket computer known as "smartphone".

Both the BBC and Sky news have been covering this subject
Sadism, sexual abuse and self-harm: Inside the online gangs where boys compete to be cruel | UK News | Sky News

'Sadistic' online gangs of teen boys targeting children, says crime agency'
'Sadistic' online gangs of teenage boys targeting children - NCA

The elephant in the room in these reports, and in the 'rape culture in primary school' story, is children using smartphones.

Despite all the warnings that smartphones are not suitable for children - warnings which have been made since the smartphone was invented, there's nothing new about it - in the UK a quarter of 5-7 year olds have their own smartphone, and over half of children under 13 use social media [Ofcom figures].

This is the principle means by which the grooming, harassment and online abuse of children is taking place. That's all technically possible without a smartphone, but 24/7 access to a smartphone, which is, don't forget, also a camera, is the perfect weapon.

Once of the cases quoted by Sky is a 12-year-old girl who was groomed into sending pictures of self-harm, and then nude photos.
Her mother said she was 'shocked' to discover these images on her daughter's phone, and to find out that the grooming had been going on for a year before she found out about it.

What that shocking case boils down to is that an 11-year-old was given a smartphone, and her use of it was not supervised, and the poor child is now "suffering some level of trauma and a lot of shame." from what happened to her.

The founder of Everyone's Invited responds to the obvious suggestion of not giving smartphones to under-16s with
“It’s unrealistic,” she says. “We can try to give them basic phones and block them from adult sites, but that’s not the world we now live in, many will still be able to access stuff.

'that’s not the world we now live in'?.
If 'the world we now live in' is one where an 11-year-old girl is handed the means by which she is going to be groomed and harmed for a full year before her parents even notice, a shoulder-shrug is not the answer - making changes to 'the world we now live in' that make it safer for children is the answer.

Sure, 'many will still be able to access stuff', but many more won't; just because we can't do everything doesn't mean we should give up and do nothing.

Everyone's Invited is doing admirable work, and I'm sorry to go on and on about one point in an excellent article, but at the heart of so many tragic cases is a smartphone in the hands of an under-16-year-old child.

One hates to think this, but--when was this ever not true? We'd like to believe that a child is a blank slate, capable of learning to behave as we'd like, if we just led her or him that way. But I think there's only so much you can do. "Don't be a liar, a thief or a bully" might get through to some of them, others not even that.

@RedToothBrush I agree with you on the social hierarchy’s. I do think a schools ethos and values really matters in these things and our current school is good at valuing everyone so they do all feel like friends even if there are looser or tighter friendship groups.

The dividing line at the primary school we left was between those exposed to inappropriate content and brought that into school and those who weren’t and/or didn’t like it. The ethos of the school was far too tolerant for want of stigmatising kids who for example
aged 8 year were talking about killing prostitutes in grand theft auto, swearing at teachers (“you old bitch”) or making sexualised comments to other girls AND boys. It wasn’t tackled even where it was to the detriment of other children and fed into more bad behaviour and bullying. That’s why I think its important to be clear on values and pragmatic about how they are reinforced.

Compared to what you describe football was actually the great leveller at that school. All the boys and half the girls played football played - I don’t know whether it was encouraged by accident or design. If design I suspect there was a big element around trying to bolster the self esteem of some of the worst behaved children (girls as well as boys). The “lower status” children were welcomed in as on the pitch they were part of the team and kids who were more rough around the edges were increasingly drawn into different styles of play eg make believe, playing with equipment. I think this helped a bit until they decided to split girls and boys to use the playground on alternate days. It rather interrupted the mixed friendship groups, or isolated boys who fancied doing something else and now had no-one else to play with. My friends son is one such child and gets called “gay” and “autistic” most days.

My lad was really in to football but he had a lot of friends that were girls at school and still has women friends as does DH. He hung out with two girls a lot who would be classed as tomboys, played football a lot with one. I was a tomboy and it’s translated to being the same as an adult. At a summer BBQ once the person I had the most in common with was a young girl of about 13 who was in to gaming like myself. The 8 women who were mainly middle aged like me were talking in depth about baking. I had nothing to add at all. Tribalism does exist and there are most definitely interests that are dominated by men or women. If you step in to an arena dominated by men or women as the other side it’s quite challenging on occasion.

I think that tribalism and social power is key - and in primary school years our kids start to learn where their interests lie and start to feel the effects of not fitting in.
By high school these divisions are very stark, although in my limited experience as a parent it seems to shift again at 6th form/college - where tribalism is rife, but judgement reduces.
How we parent our kids and what happens in school can shape better outcomes I think - but online resources and networks have a huge influence.
Fwiw, I think uniform rules, playground space and allocation and unconscious bias continue to shape gender stereotypes.
Attitudes towards male/female identity seems to be in a very unhealthy place right now and I don't think it's good for boys or girls.
My DD had a rough time at high school as a non conformity girl. The prevailing attitude of teenage boys was pretty horrible. Even kinder more empathetic boys hid it from their peers. The culture was very blokey, bit rapey, and unkind. Ironically some of these lads are now keen to get a girlfriend and unsurprisingly are finding it hard as the network of girls they know, know what they're like! This in turn is the kind of dynamic that ends up with men hating women for not giving them what they want.
But I do think this is something that men as a collective have to want to address. Until they do, nothing much will change.

@RedToothBrushbut my daughter is completely different (I know this is a very small sample size). She is 9 and knows what every boy in her class is into, even if it isn’t things she is herself interested in. She said ‘so and so was upset today’ and ‘so and so wore this into school as it was certain religious holiday today’. She knows the boys and talks to them, she takes time to find out what they are interested in and adapts her tone/ energy accordingly. She is good listener; and I think that is almost a universal female trait. I think women are better as listening, it’s not biological, we teach ourselves to do it to get our needs met as we have no power!

I teach in a primary and honestly don't recognise any of the above about boys' and girls' relationships. The girls and boys all socialise and are often very good friends. Girls make up about a third of the children who play football at break and aren't treated differently. There isn't some big divide between them. It's the same at my child's primary. I'm not doubting there are schools like that but it isn't universal.