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)?

That's not a problem at all, it just needs to be switched off and kept in their bag for the duration of the school day.

Navigation on Google maps, checking bus times which Google maps has live updates for, messaging me if there's a problem with transport or to ask if ge can stay out, stuff like that.
Why should kids be prevented from accessing the useful tools a smartphone can provide.

We’re not going to get one til 14 absolutely earliest. It’s terrible for their development and loads of parents don’t really want to but do because they think everyone is. There’s the aforementioned smartphone free childhood groups whose aim is to encourage us to collectively not get them so they don’t feel left out. Def worth checking this out if you haven’t

They really don’t. Not in a school with 3000 pupils.

The technology exists and no amount of sticking your head in the sand is going to make it otherwise. You might as well work with it.

As others have said, many schools set homework and communicate with students on apps. Bus tickets, pocket money bank accounts, etc. are all based on apps. Teenagers will feel left out if they are not able to communicate with their friends, share music playlists, photos, memes, whatever. Smart phones are tools for modern life and parents need to be able to guide their children in using these tools.

Really? Guess my top of the class child must be the exception then?

You could have a phone-free childhood with terrible parents who never do anything with you. Or you can have a phone at 12, have parents that do loads with you, lots of activities, always outside, always with friends and allow you to learn abit of responsibility.

If my child didn’t have a phone at 12, im not sure how he would arrange the meet up with his friends this holiday (which he’s done several times). I imagine a 12 year old without access to a smartphone is missing out on alot with their friends. I wouldn’t want to deliberately isolate my child.

Excellent post @tishtashtoo , people are delusional if they think the parent settings are watertight/ a magic wand and mean their kids get none of the risks of a smartphone. Kids and teens are much more tech savvy and know how to get round them! Eg:

• my friend set her daughter’s phone to go off at 7:30 every day. Her lovely, not rebellious 11 year old got round this by changing her phone time zone to Los Angeles so she could keep using it!
• Another friend found her son switched out the SIM card for a PAYG sim so he could get round the parental controls.

The average age for kids to first see porn is now 11 and as above this is often violent porn and in no way akin to the Playboy mags that may have been passed around the playground a generation ago.

It’s beyond depressing how little people on here seem to know.

The issue is someone in the family usually has a smart phone. The cost of a laptop is significantly higher, something families may not be able to justify.

The fact that controls can be evaded by some kids is why keeping phones out of bedrooms and checking them often is generally a good idea. You need to be on top of it all, with layers of protection. Blocking porn at the router level helps.

Incidentally my ds first stumbled across porn when searching for something quite innocent on the family desktop computer which lived in the living room. (These days it's blocked at the router as well as on all devices.) Nothing is perfect short of never using any Internet-connected devices at all and making sure your child has no friends who do either.

He certainly could be and there are always exceptions. It’s meant to be worse for girls which I have. There’s lots of literature out there to support my view and I’m happy to get them a dumb phone for meeting friends and calling me.

The smartphone free childhood I spoke about promotes groups adopting this and not giving them one til later so they’re not left out.

He isn’t though as not a single one of his friends doesn’t have a smartphone and nearly all of his friends are high achievers too in his close group. Im afraid any 12 year old will be the exception without a smartphone and isolated from what is being arranged/communicating with friends.

The most important thing is to have clear boundaries, for example a set time they can’t use the phone in the evening (we do that to coincide with when homework is done and then its off for the night). It’s like any part of parenting, you have to have rules and boundaries and a child who is denied something completely is usually the child that will rebel at some point.

@ICouldBeVioletSky if they can bypass smartphones why couldn't they do the same with a tablet and see/do everything that way?

Can you not comfort your own conscience about your parenting in your journal or something? I don't know who you are and I can't help you.

We have different views and that’s ok. All the best

I wake up knowing im giving my kids a brilliant childhood and great education. Denying your child the internet is very inward looking and cutting them off from a whole world of information out there.

Good luck in school as they will using the internet/tablets from Primary school age (reception homework had to be done on tablets at our school).

Totally agree - the extremes on here though 🙈 People seem to think a 12 year old is guaranteed to be watching porn if they have a smartphone and others think they will deny their child the internet completely. A healthy middle ground is usually the answer to most things.

@StillCreatingAName there are a lot of replies and posts on this thread so apologies if it’s been posted already but presumably you’ve seen this? https://delaysmartphones.org.uk/about/

there’s been fair amount of news coverage of it. You could get a group of parents together to delay together?

(my personal opinion is it’s the social media that’s the problem, not the device, plus lack of dialogue between children and parents, or parents not knowing how to use parental controls or insisting on phones being put away at bedtime etc. I also think secondary schools should ban all smartphones - some local to me only allow ‘bricks’. Smartphones are helpful for some kids for checking bus times etc).

My daughter had a phone on Year 6 and that was before Covid!

Kids are very smart! I got round all sorts of parental controls when I was younger just by being observant and curious about how things worked.

I realise that my kids will need some kind of phone to contact me when out and about and to make arrangements and speak to friends, to allow developing independence. When I was a kid. I had a call home card for pay phones and a house phone.

However, a dumb phone will be fine for this.

Schools should not be requiring kids to use phones during the school day. As a teacher, I think that is terrible practice and you should complain. Smart phones are banned in all schools where I am. If tech is genuinely required for a learning task then they go to a computer room or bring out a laptop /tablet for it , depending on the school.

i see how damaging smart phones are. They are very different to eg using a laptop for a specific task. The laptop can be closed and put out of mind. The smart phone stays in the pocket, tempting and distracting them even when they are not looking at it.

children are hopelessly addicted to these things. They just cannot regulate themselves and I spend a lot of time managing those who are sneaking them, even though they are banned. At break time or during free time in class, they don’t want to talk to each other or are unable to maintain a conversation. I could have chatted for hours with my friends as a teen if allowed. Today’s teens just sit mindlessly and isolated staring at their phones. They are losing the art of socialisation and conversation.

More parents are waking up to this, so please stand firm and don’t be pushed into something you don’t want for your child because “everyone else is doing it”. Once you give in, it’s going to be almost impossible to row back . Delay smart phone as long as possible.

I’m a teacher where s mart phones are banned. In low socio economic areas, schools have computer rooms or banks of laptops that the classes use as required, or the school library has laptops that it hires out to kids at a low cost.

Homework is communicated in class and students write it in their diary. Tasks requiring a device would always be optional and there would be a screen free alternative. This is just about schools/teachers changing their practice and can be done. Speak to your school if you’re unhappy about device use.

My older 2 dc had smartphones from part way through year 7. My 3rd is considerably less trustworthy so he has one (currently year 8) but is only allowed it when he is out and might need to contact us. Dc1 (aged 17) has Instagram and discord, dc2 (aged 15) has discord. Dc4 is in year 6 but won't be allowed any kind of phone for a while, and will have a non smart phone when the time comes.

Smart phones are banned in all schools where I am

Apart, of course, from when there is a medical need for them to be on and with the pupil at all times…

Also OP you have to remember that parents who have already given their kids smart phones will have a strong need to justify it to themselves, and to focus on the positives (which of course there always are, with any device or parenting decision in general) and to downplay or deny the negatives.

If they are not teachers, they also only see how their own child behaves at home, and do not see what impact smart phones have on children in general, and on the community.

Whereas I as a teacher can see that the negatives far outweigh the benefits.( as described above)

Itmatters what other parents do and it is your business, because your child is only as protected as the least protected kid at the school. Before the ban, kids were sending horrifically violent and pornographic videos around by text or airdrop, bypassing any controls you as a parent might set. They were also taking photos and videos of other children and posting them on social media. Along with the insidious distraction, limited attention span, addiction and disruptive behaviour associated with them being in bags and pockets.

Hence I have chosen a school with a strictly enforced ban on phones for my kids - they are locked up bell to bell if brought to school.

You can usually find a different device or solution that provides more of the specific benefits you want without some of the dangers of the smart phones.

Eg a dumb phone for calls. A home desktop computer for word processing or internet research tasks. Print out the bus timetable and put it in your bag. Plan your journey in advance and print out a map if if required. A smart/bluetooth speaker/ Yoto player for music/audio books/ podcasts. An iPad with only specific apps loaded on to it, without access to the internet or any messaging or social media etc.

This is not necessarily true. I'd say I'm more anti smart phones precisely because my kids have had then over the last eight years. I would do some things differently if starting again. I'd be trying for solutions that didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater though. We should be able to use phones with the useful stuff and not the bad stuff but without that depending on individual parents having to become experts in creating layers of security.

Years ago on here people tended to be competitively chilled about not restricting or supervising their kids phones but I wonder if that might be changing a bit now. For kids with things like ADHD or even just the ones stuck sitting near noisy classmates homework and class materials being online is a godsend (which doesn't mean unrestricted phone or computer use is appropriate, just that they can be useful). None of this is black and white.