No phone for secondary school

[StillCreatingAName]

AIBU? I feel like I might be missing something obvious on this one, but honestly why do children need to take a smartphone to school? It’s baffling me as to why there appears to be parents on auto pilot buying their children smartphones (£££) now in year 6, ready for year 7 as though it’s part of a uniform policy (and then sharing their purchase on the class WhatsApp, give me strength).

Is this all just a fallout from lockdown times, people were sort of forced into screen life, so now there’s more children at secondary school with them, who may not have ordinarily had a phone until older?
I’m expecting dc to walk home with friends talking and socialising without the inclusion of a screen or mindlessly scrolling social media instead of listening to friends. I can see where a basic phone might be needed to contact home, but that doesn’t mean the phone should be out of school bag anytime during school hours should it, but maybe I’m just being naive, time will tell 🤷‍♀️?

AIBU to say children don’t need to get a £££ phone for starting secondary school? (It goes without saying they don’t need it at all for primary school, IMHO)?

I agree op.

I regret getting my dd a phone when she started secondary, if I had my time again I'd wait until she was 13yo at least.

Yep, so pausing to consider and prioritise my dc’s age and future mental health- which includes starting threads to see if not having a smartphone will impact him too- is perfectly reasonable thing to do from a parent pov. I remain unconvinced that in year 7, age 11 that a smartphone is essential, a phone that can simply be used for calls and messages is probably more appropriate for outside school hours.

Yes, and people have explained all of the reasons why a decent phone is likely to be needed for secondary school. Also, how you can achieve that without it costing a fortune.

Many of those reasons did not refer to contact with friends and could be things you didn't yet seem to have considered, like homework apps, timetables, dinner money accounts, bus travel etc.

You are keeping on about only one thing - friends and social media. Just don't allow social media quite yet, though they'll come across it anyway without you present as you can't stop them looking at other friends' phones.

To be honest, schools themselves are now in a halfway house of wanting/needing to appear to be banning phones on the one hand, yet on the other also now using the technology which requires them (homework apps, WhatsApp groups, wanting kids numbers when out on school trips etc.).

DS has just been explaining "air dropping" on i Pad devices. He said in high school young people get pron images/videos "air dropped" in class. And that's in class time - not at home. He said this happened to him in English class on the school issued ipads. What hope is there for our young people???

DS said there needs more monitoring by schools. He said it isn't good enough. He said that as a 16yo.

Yikes - did he report it?

My son gets the bus to school and in our city, bus tickets are cheaper through an app, so he got a phone when starting school. Also, the bus service is not very reliable, so now even at 6th form , he texts me when he gets on the bus, because if he misses it, there is not another bus for 30 minutes.

He said it happens to loads of young people in the classes at the high school, it was common place. He has since moved schools and isn't affected by this now. Horrific. And that's not even within a parent's jurisdiction within the hours of a school day. What are parents meant to do?

He said he now turns off "air drop" mode in his current high school unless a teacher specifically requests he has it turned on.

It just shows even with the very of intentions, even schools are struggling with monitoring of devices.

I don't think it's fair to call parents who want to delay giving their children a smartphone 'luddite'. They are making their own assessment based on their child, and the risks of having a smartphone right now vs not having one. A luddite position would be 'ban all smartphones for everyone forever' - what people who are wary on this thread are saying is more like 'I'm not sure that it's a good idea quite yet, maybe wait a bit till they are more mature'. Noone is saying that kids shouldn't ever be allowed a phone or taught how to use one - the question is when is the right age?

Sure, smartphones are useful. So are cars. It would be awesome if my DD could just drive herself to her own activities - so much independence and so much less burden on me. Both are also potentially dangerous - the difference is that in one case, there is a law dictating when the state decides children are old enough to manage the responsibility, in the other case it's left to parents to make their own decision as to when their child is mature enough and when the benefits outweigh the risks. Given the growing evidence of the problems smartphones can cause, it's not unreasonable for parents to be worried that 11 is very young to be given something so potentially addictive, and to worry about being pushed into getting one just because 'everyone else has one'.

So much is online now. All three even my primary schooler, homework are set on apps sometimes the homework comes though at 8pm they are told to routinely check the apps.

Ones time table changes weekly again on the app, the school will print it but often a class suddenly changes and you’d need a new one nearly every day. Lunch money is viewable on the app, no checking it for DD without the app so she would have to line up and pray there is enough money without it. Their honour badges and reward points are all on the app as are detentions and poor behaviour notices.

Dd’s school use six different apps for various school work plus the main school app, ds has three. Primary schooler has four apps. Then there is Google classrooms too.

Then theirs secondary school residential trips where a phone is almost top of the list. Tbh sometimes just the day trips too. They take the children’s numbers so they can have some monitored freedoms or are expected to go off on map walks (app maps no paper maps provided) and take photos to show what they found / achieved. Uploaded then via an app to make a presentation at the end of the day/trip.

Yes you could use a shared iPad at home for the homework aspect but if you’ve more than one child you now need 2/3/4 iPads and you might as well just get smart phones at that point. Plus a home iPad doesn’t help with checking lunch money while there as you’ve forgotten or if a class have swapped rooms or pe has just been cancelled so your now doing something different elsewhere.

What you’d need is school to go way back to being not cashless and everything printed and posted. No emails no apps back to old fashioned ways, but then they lose their eco credentials.

And I forgot son’s bus ticket being on an app as he busses to school as the busses offer the tickets cheaper.

Another thing to ask my DS then!
I was thinking, surely the school can lock the ipads down more, but I am not sure about Air Drop, if someone has an image on their phone, is it easy to stop them sending it to someone else?
I know my DS would not report it (or indeed even tell me), but I would really like to hope that they wouldn't be receiving images on school issued products during lessons.

You can block receiving airdrops.

Navigate to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions and toggle Content & Privacy Restrictions to on. Then tap Allowed Apps and toggle AirDrop to off

So a school could do this globally on school issued products?

Yes but many are sending inappropriate images/videos even when it's open during the class for the teacher to send educational content to all pupils.

It should be policed better or just disable air drop on all devices.

I just don't know the answer. Just thinking aloud here. It's such a worry. Knew nothing about air drop until speaking to my DS today. I only use android devices. Feel terrible he is almost finished formal education and I am only aware of this now. As a parent it's so difficult to know all of these loopholes over several types of devices.

As someone uptrend rightly said the genie is out the bottle.

Mapping apps have certainly been a bit of a lifesaver for my DS after he started secondary school. Sometimes the tube station nearest his school would be inaccessible and he'd have to find his way to the next one, which he would really have struggled with if he hadn't had a phone.

At 14 he and his friends can go into central London and find their way around using Google Maps with no trouble – more than I could have done at his age!

Yep, so pausing to consider and prioritise my dc’s age and future mental health- which includes starting threads to see if not having a smartphone will impact him too- is perfectly reasonable thing to do from a parent pov. I remain unconvinced that in year 7, age 11 that a smartphone is essential, a phone that can simply be used for calls and messages is probably more appropriate for outside school hours.

Then do that? Just don't expect other parents and kids to pick up the slack and put the work in to make up for it. It's that simple. You don't want him to have one so he doesn't have one. What other parents do is irrelevant.

Yeah schools tech team could lock it all down. Problem is school tech team are not exactly very techhy. More just someone who completed one IT course a lot of the time who brands themselves as such.

School could have their own bloody app created and that be the only thing useable so only teachers can share with pupils and pupils to teachers but not to each other.

They use lazy tech though.

Great post @lilythesheep
Sure, smartphones are useful. So are cars. It would be awesome if my DD could just drive herself to her own activities - so much independence and so much less burden on me.
🤣
I actually think some parents would buy their kids a self driving car for starting secondary school, especially if it’s what all their friends had and if it would make life easier, right? Hand them the keys and hope for the best…

Met an mi5 security man once at a careers day. He was saying 98% of school hacks are pupils and most are successful

in this scenario it would be the school setting the destination of the cars and you only have access to it if you have a self drive car.

My DS's friend apparently hacked in to the system and changed it so that he received the emails about detentions, etc instead of his parents.
I kind of wish my DS had done that, I am overwhelmed with school communication sometimes!

DS is going up to secondary in September and I'm starting to consider if he needs a phone.

One issue we're coming up with is that he's meeting and making friends with other children who don't live nearby (as in, in our village, they're a train/bus journey away) and who are unlikely to be going to the same secondary school. I want to help him to maintain friendships, and it's getting more common for these other children to have phones and they want to add him to Whatsapp. So far we're using my phone.

We can't let him meet up with his friends on his own, he won't visit a friend's house without one of us with him - I'd love him to be more independent but on the other hand he might have a meltdown and it's not fair to leave that for someone else to deal with even if DS was willing.