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)?

In the US you can buy a lightphone - basically a minimal smartphone with no internet or social media (but which does allow calls, texts and group messaging). I wish they would make that available over here.

@SuziQuinto
they already need access to apps now and have to borrow parents phones/tablets if they don’t have their own.

@gldd

Online gaming is NOT just on smartphones or because of smartphones. Hell that has even a thing (LAN parties anyone?) before I even held a smartphone in my hand. How many people have several consoles and devices for gaming, for themselves and their kids?

Porn... same. They can find it on the ipad, on the laptop, on the smart telly, on their parents devices etc. Actually, I would really like to see any and all porn more stringently regulated, including having to sign up for it /register a credit card, even if it's free to make access a bit trickier for everyone, particularly young people.

Sleep deprivation... no phone At nighttime. I used to stay up late into the night reading a book , same effect.

Attention fragmentation- not that many notifications if not many/any apps and limited access.

Not going to.... uhmm yes you can. Some people choose to.

Plenty of independence. Knowing where your kids are is not curbing their independence. Whenever something happens the first thing people ask is where are the parents and why don't they know where their kids are/what they get up to.

And so on.

The tool in itself is not damaging. The way it is used can be. Like a kitchen knife. Since we're talking about children, it's up to the parents to manage,supervise and restrict that usage while also teaching children how to use it safely. Like you would do with any tool.

Petition: Ban smartphones and camera phones for under 16s
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/655473

You can restrict what they use the phone for. They don’t need to have social media accounts but there are many other uses for a smart phone. The word is filled with ever changing technology and it always will be for them.

I don’t agree that it means they are ‘growing up to fast’ - that’s just a comparison to when we first had smartphones. Because they didn’t exist when we were the same age.

So I think YABU when saying this about children other than your own. Because it’s actually none of your business. YANBU to make your own choice with your own children.

Check with school. Our Academy Trust does not.

I just bought one for Year 6 child who's starting secondary in September.

He's the last in his year to get one.

At the end of the day, he'll be going to a school in another town and the school bus to the villages is notoriously unreliable. Sometimes it just doesn't turn up. I won't risk him being stranded, especially as no public transport comes through our village.

I’m in this exact same predicament. I absolutely hate the idea of my, soon to be, year 7 child having a phone. He has access to screens and I allow him to play Minecraft, Roblox and Fife. He has an email account. I don’t allow Fortnite and he has thankfully missed out on a HUGE amount of bullying by me making that decision, but now we have the phone decision rearing its head. I’ve already said if I get a phone it won’t be ‘his phone’, it will be a utility phone that makes us contactable if the coach is late or he has an after school detention etc. I honestly don’t know what this looks like in practice though.

im grateful for the poster who linked to smartphone free childhood. I’m going to go and look that up now and join a local group.

I have posted on quite a few threads about children having phones, and a familiar theme does seem to be an “all or nothing” approach. E.g you either let you child have a phone and thus access to all social media and everything on the internet and all the evils or you don’t let them have a phone.

DS is 11, prior to the first lockdown had be brought up totally screen free and it was something I was really quite adamant about. Now, 4 years on he has an Xbox, a kids fire tablet, and an iPhone. Each one of these devices is heavily locked down. As I’ve mentioned on other threads he doesn’t even have the app to access the internet on his phone - parental controls allow me to remove it completely, he also does not have any social media, no WhatsApp, and any app he wants to download has to be approved via my phone by me putting in a code or using my own Face ID. He originally had access to FaceTime and his friends would have group calls whilst playing games together on his Xbox, but as friends of friends were being added into these chats I just simply limited his access. This allows him to still keep in touch with his friends (who all live miles away owing to his school being 26 miles away), organise gaming sessions, I can track his location on the school bus, he can call us if he is running late, as a family we all go out multiple times a week and play Pokémon Go together, the list goes on. All of these things benefit him in various ways, socially, from a safety perspective etc, but also allow him to have those benefits whilst being protected from wider harms that can occur from social media use and unfettered access to the web.

So much of what we do in life now revolves around technology, I would rather DS have a carefully supervised introduction to technology now, that can be built upon slowly with age and responsibility, than bar him from it until he is 16-18 and then expect him to suddenly understand responsible use.

I don't disagree with you on some of these points. Clearly some parents will be managing their children's usages responsibly.

But if you read what the teachers on this thread are saying, most parents (not you, i'm sure) have no idea what their children are doing on their phones and they're increasingly having to deal with the fallout. There is an epidemic of mental illness among young people, with a wealth of correlational, and now experimental, evidence that this is linked to smart phone use in teens and pre-teens. (https://www.afterbabel.com/)

The fact is that giving phones to children has led to a shift from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood. Do you think this is a good thing?

These devices and software have been created by design by behavioural psychologists to hold our attention as long as possible. Adults can barely put them down, do you think its a good idea to give them to children with developing brains?

The creators of the hardware and software (and tech whistleblowers) are on record as saying that they designed to be addictive, and are bad for child mental health. They send their children to technology-free schools (no, not even phone free schools, screen free schools! - see Waldorf School of the Peninsula). Does this not bother you?

Do you not see that there might be a wider problem here?

The saying I heard recently is ‘ you’re not allowing your child to have access to the whole world, you’re allowing the whole world to have access to your child’.

@gldd I also work in a school, and the trouble is, the parents that don't check will never be the parents that don't allow their kids smartphones. And while I can see the damage (I agree with phone bans/restrictions in school-which is why DD knows if she ever gets caught she can say goodbye to that phone to a long time because I'm not picking it up) , I can't agree with a full ban on smartphones for under 16s(let's say) because it fucks everyone up.

On tech tycoons thing, we also need to be realistic to what kind of resources these people have. Their kid won't be the kid (often on their own)waiting in the rain at the bus station for an unknown time waiting for a late/broken down bus , with no idea when it's going to arrive,if it will arrive at all. Or going out with their friends at 11. Or arriving in an empty house from school. Or spending a few hours on their own at home because parents have to work.Their kids might have a tech free , free range childhood, but it's in a strictly controlled and restricted environment,with people of similar backgrounds, with a lot of funds to back up their principles.

Oh and to answer your actual question, of course I can see there's a problem. My opinion (I stated I might be deluded) is that we as parents we can find a balance between no tech and unfettered access to internet and that we should definitely try.

🥺

PaperDolls, thanks for your thoughts. I've enjoyed discussing this with you.

I would've thought that the parents who dont check their kids thoughts being the ones who who never ban phones - well that's a good reason for legislative change.

Yes of course the tech tycoons are better resourced and live in a different world. But a kid waiting in the rain for the bus - so they get wet! The bus doesn't arrive - so they have to use their initiative, or maybe actually talk to another human being and then gain some independence and agency in the real world! Would that be so bad? Arriving in an empty house from school - why is this a problem? What does a smart phone solve here? Almost none of the 'problems' i've seen described on this entire thread could not be solved with a simple feature / dumb phone, or a bit of understanding from schools or businesses. Do you think if the bus company only had half their customers with phones they wouldn't ease their mandate of QR codes only, and bring back card payments tomorrow? As I see it, the harms and risks for children and young people of a phone-based childhood replacing a play-based childhood far outweigh the benefits.

I'm fairly hard line on this whole issue, but i'm as yet undecided on a full ban for under 16s. I would probably rather have stringent, independent, and enforced age verification for social media and adult content (with the responsibility being on the tech companies). At the moment it's a free-for-all, and kids are clearly suffering.

I'm not at all for no-tech (I work in a technology-adjacent sector). But on this one i'm with the Amish. You might think that the Amish are anti-technology - that isn't true. They carefully consider new technology and then decide if it aligns with their morals and values. If it does, they adopt it. If it doesn't, they don't. I don't like smart phones at all, and don't have one. If another adult wants an always-on experience blocker in their pocket, that's their business. But there's no way we've carefully considered whether children should have these things. I hope that's beginning to change.

Thanks

My sons autistic and in mainstream. His phone stays in his bag all day and he doesn’t use it at school but it’s handy if there was any transport issues etc.

on some occasions they are encouraged to use their phone in lessons to research something 🤷‍♀️

homework is also sent on an app!

You can get feature / dumb / flip phones that have no social media but a simple version of WhatsApp. See KaiOSx on Nokia (8000 4G, 6300 4G, 800 Tough), plus others

Due to the recent government advice I think all schools are supposed to be cracking down on them in school. If they are seen, they are supposed to be confiscated. Often they say it should be switched off in their bag during school hours, although realistically which young adult is going to do that...

It is a little annoying that most homework is now platform based and homework diaries are being phased out to cut costs. I hope that when ds goes to secondary he will access this sort of thing from the home computer.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to be able to operate at school without a smartphone but then your child becomes different to their peers and that's no fun - unless you have a self-assured child who can ride that wave.

Phones have to be in lockers at our school.

They have a phone so they can contact me should the bus not turn up. So that when I am at work I can call them after they are off the bus and make sure they have got home safe.

I have two bereaved children if I am late home they panic so they can call me to see I’m ok.

times have changed and teens are ever more social. I have a 12 year old who’s got a better social life than me which she organises by herself via her phone.

my kids also do sport regularly so they are not stuck to their phones. They even spend time with me.

people say it weren’t like this in our day but if phones had been around at that time you would have had one. I was never allowed anywhere with my friends, I am jealous of my kids freedom part of which they have because I can easily contact them, track where they are. Their friends also have my numbers and know they can call me if they miss a lift or anything.

Oh and schoolwork is don’t paper and pen. Apart from doctor frost. Have to check an app for their homework.

Totally, my point was just that the study I mentioned looked beyond social media use to general digital media use and its effect.

It may be none of my business, but it is both a wider societal problem and a collective action problem (making changes doesn't work in isolation). So, there are reasonable grounds in my eyes for discussing this more widely than the household.

Should I not be concerned about young people that are not my own when their is an epidemic of mental health problems that have been linked both correlationally and experimentally to the shift to phone-based childhoods?

Hey, shouldn't it be my business alone to drive my car as fast as I please in front of a school? Actually no, it's bad for children if I do. That's why we have speed limits. Do you see the similarity?

I think it's about installing appropriate usage of the phone into your child.

My Dc have had smartphones from starting secondary. They get the train to school so the app allows them to access timetables, scan tickets. If train is delayed, they access the bus app. If they don't have cash, they access their monzo account. If they're delayed, I can track their progress on Life360 app. They manage their sports fixtures on the Spond app and their homework on a different app.

What they don't have is access to social media apps. We use text and WhatsApp to communicate and thankfully, keeping them busy with sports and after school activities doesn't give them the time or desire to dive into social media.

From the Guardian yesterday - whatever anyone thinks, it seems very likely tighter restrictions of some sort are in the pipeline.

The balance of risk tends towards favouring political action to reinforce boundaries around childhood when it has been invaded and commodified by advances in digital technology.

It is easy to see why companies that profit by monopolising the attention span of young minds want unchecked access. It is far from obvious why that access should be granted.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/10/the-guardian-view-on-smartphones-and-children-a-compelling-case-for-action

Same. I like to know my daughter is home safe