To wonder what the ban on smartphones across 17 schools in South London will acheive.

[ThatMother2024]

The Guardian reports that 17 schools are uniting to ban smartphones. I have no idea what this is expected to acheive, what the evidence base is and whether kids will just devise some easy workaround.

That's a outrageous and mendacious misquote & you know it 😆😂😂! - I wasn't even talking about phones and that extract doesn't reflect a true and fair view of the whole post. Do you work in press/politics?! Doesn't matter, I was clearly talking to myself anyway, as no one else has engaged with that debate 😝😂.

@Needmorelego think you and I are on the same page 😊, regardless of area of world, phone use can be very antisocial in the real world (as opposed to the virtual one).

I have 2 kids who have always been very responsible with phone use and 1 who has grown into it eventually.

Overwhelming research that they shorten attention spans. And working with youth, they are a total scourge to participation if general rule is not to put them away.

And whilst you can put every control on the planet on your own kids phone, you can't on their peers and for some parents ignorance must be absolute bliss.

How on earth is this controversial, it’s an excellent idea. Children do not need mobile phones at school and I was amazed at one of our local sought after privates which freelyallows them. At our local state secondary which my child attends, any pupil who is seen with a mobile has it confiscated for a week and parents contacted. This is enforced and it works. It means kids spend breaktimes socialising/playing sport/in the library.

Of course there is common sense so eg if on way back from sports matches in school minibus the children are allowed to text parents with arrival times.

No system is ever perfect but not allowing phones to be visible on the school site is an absolute no brainer no me.

I feel we are sleepwalking into a mental health crisis that is utterly preventable with our kids and I'm scared for my 9 year old. If you're really interested in the evidence please check out these links:

(These resources were supplied by Smartphone Free Childhood)

1. We managed to snatch a few hours talking with Jonathan Haidt on Monday eve, and we know many of you will have attended one of his events in the UK. He shared a lot of wisdom and is thrilled at the people-powered rise of this movement – he wants the same thing to kick off in the US. Check out this recording of the Intelligence Squared talk he gave on Tuesday eve, in which he responds robustly to some of the critiques of his work. We encourage you to watch and share within your school groups.

https://www.youtube.com/live/CPPZ4-qhgwQ?si=UympIPd7JUAFfGKi&t=2574

1. Norway published pivotal research showing that banning phones in schools brought huge benefits to kids, including a steep drop in bullying, reduction in medical appointments for psychological help, and improved grades. This was shown to be most significant for younger girls from disadvantaged backgrounds. Read the full study here:

https://www.nhh.no/en/nhh-bulletin/article-archive/2024/february/mobiles-should-be-out-of-the-classrooms/

1. The French government published a study this week which concluded that children should not access smartphones until at least 13 and that social media apps (especially those that monetise attention) should be inaccessible for under 18s. Vive la France!

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/30/stop-children-using-smartphones-until-they-are-13-say-french-experts-in-report

If you are ready to join the movement or just want to keep up to date:
https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/join

Yes we spot check, internet access is limited and screen time is curfewed. As I've said, I genuinely don't mind them using their phones mindlessly when they do - they have such full-on days and weekends that they need to 'switch off' during down times. They seem to look at utter shyte videos of people doing silly dances or filming their food, take photos of themselves with the camera the wrong way round (so selfie but with the regular lens so you turn the phone) and send millions of what apps which contain approx 2 words or abbreviations (and call each other 'Bruh').

They are well aware of digital footprints being there forever, being alert for and wary of strangers approaching them online (we had issues with Roblox years ago) and that there is very bad stuff on the internet and we will know if they have seen it (so tell us if it was an accident). They are still learning how words can be perceived much more harshly when written down and to try to take care to check that they don't sound unkind or rude before hitting send.

An interesting thought.....
I was just reading the thread about a tv presenter (?) who has gone missing on a Greek island (I hadn't heard of the guy - but I hope he turns up).
Everyone is saying things like "Why didn't he have his phone? He could be tracked if he had his phone."
Yet on this thread people are saying it's perfectly fine for children to make their way to and from school without having a phone ("because we managed in our day blah blah").
Society changes all the time.
Public phone boxes are now rare and children go to school much farther from home thanks to parental choice/random allocation.
Plus you now have the whole "bus pass on the phone thing" and homework sent via an app.
I think secondary schools should allow phones with the "switched off and out of sight" rule and one of the first things when a child is offered a place and before they even start is have children sign a form that they agree to this rule and if the rule is broken the phone will be confiscated.
Parents sign a similar form.
Don't sign the form - lose your place.
I mean if schools can punish for not having a purple pen - why can't they do this?

I have diabetes and use a CGM linked to my mobile.

You make an exception for that student. You don't need tp allow mobiles for hundreds of children because a couple of students have important apps. That's a disability accommodation to the general rule. It happens with all sorts of things.

Agree. I also use a separate handheld scanner for mine

A steep drop in bullying? Bullying was rife in my school and that was way before smartphones.

About a year or so after I got my first mobile, when I was 15, I got a phone call from my Dad on the way home from school (Lived in London). He wanted to know... are the buses running, and to tell me..go home now. Tell your friends to go home... there's been a major terrorist attack. And that he wasn't sure when he and my mother would get home as they were worried about trains. That was September 2001...

I can totally see why anyone with children on public transport wants to be able to contact them. Mine have a 5 minute walk to Secondary and leave their phones at home.
Now does it need to be Smartphone... well there's good stuff on smartphones too. They are, at the end if the day, handheld computers. They use them for socialising... but also for homework, or checking on transport, or bank cards... loads if uses.

It would be great if somehow schools could just block phone signals within their grounds!

So a normal mobile phone (brick) without smart functions performed this task well.

A steep drop in bullying? Bullying was rife in my school and that was way before smartphones.

Great, now close your eyes and imagine that you carry your bullies’ voices and faces in your pocket all the time and that everyone in your school group can watch the outcome for entertainment.

I think this is claw back. Things got way out of hand during covid because there were blurred lines between school and home and kids needed devices for online learning etc (not all homes had laptops/ tablets but most had smartphones). I think initially schools went easy on pupils producing phones in class because they were aware they needed to adjust back to in-school learning etc. In the past year though (in Ireland) schools have got very strict on phone use and most ban them in school now but they obviously have no control over what happens after school so I am not sure how it would reduce online bullying as some have suggested.

@AlpineMuesli I said it didn't need to be a smartphone. But that the smartphone itself doubles as something else. (Tablet and non-smartphone... or just a cheap smartphone? Whats more cost effective?)

Online bullying is an Internet problem however. It doesn't just relate to phone use.

Ok then....
What we (society) need to have a ban like this in place is -
Bus tickets should either be a smart card or a "school pass" card.
More public payphones.
No homework to be set via an app.
Until that's in place then I don't think schools can ban smart phones.

None of those are reasons for having a smartphone during school hours.

@N4ish yes but how can a child get to school if they rely on an electronic bus pass/ticket that is on a app on a smart phone?

One other reason is thieves know kids carry phones and are easy targets when they walk home from school

They bring the phone to school as normal then hand it in at reception or put it in a locked pouch. Lots of schools are organising things this way now, I had to do something similar at a theatre performance recently. Phones are collected at the end of the day.

Oh yes, the 'I know m'rights' brigade. they're usually the parents whose off-spring cause most trouble because they know that their ineffectual breeders will always support them.
Back in the day when mobiles were mini bricks I told a girl off for answering her phone in my class, probably one of the only pupils who had one. The mother played hell with the school, How dare that bitch, (me) try to stop her contacting her child! and so on.
I can't imagine that the situation has improved! So many problems children have seem come from phones, the parents give their children the capacity to access social media and all the negative context then expect the school to waste time solving the problems under the convenient heading of 'safeguarding'.

I don’t think it’s the schools responsibility to contract with parents what happens in their homes.

Yet those parents will expect the school to get involved in solving the problems that they, the parents, have allowed to happen! School have become society's whipping boy.

Ok then....
What we (society) need to have a ban like this in place is -
Bus tickets should either be a smart card or a "school pass" card.
More public payphones.
No homework to be set via an app.
Until that's in place then I don't think schools can ban smart phones.

What has that got to do with banning phones in school hours? Saying they should be switched off in the bottom of bags is not enough - students have them on silent and get them out sneakily, or in the toilets. Imo the only answer (cumbersome though it is) is to hand over phones on arrival at school and get them back at the end of the day. Some will still get around it by handing in an old phone though.

It’s a good idea and I hope it catches on. Our school used to have yonder pouches. After several incidents of stuff at school being filmed and put on social media, the main being a fight where a girl was set upon by several other girls. It was horrific. I mean it got the girls involved in a lot of trouble but was also traumatising for the girl involved.

@N4ish @AllProperTeaIsTheft well yes that's a perfect and obvious solution.
At form group registration each day children hand over their phones and they are locked away.
At the end of the day have another form group session where they are handed back out.
If a child doesn't hand over the phone and they are caught using it - it gets taken off them.
But this whole argument is about schools banning them completely.

The "workaround" arguement was used when banning under 18s from smoking and drinking among other stuff. I'm sure if heroin had previously been legal for kids people would still argue it.
Makes me laugh obviously banning things won't stop every kid finding a way to do something but it certainly makes it harder for them, usually people who oppose it work in some industry like tobacco etc

My sons school found phone confiscation was more trouble than it was worth. So now, if your phone is seen or heard on school property, it's immediate lunchtime detention. Second offence immediate after school detention.

Works well for us. They have their phone for journey to / from school, my sons can contact me after school if they're not coming straight home, they have google pay if they want a drink from a shop on the way home (we moved to this as they would lose bank cards constantly!), and can listen to music on their headphones during the journey too.

Hasn't this thread missed the point a bit? Yes phones should be completely banned in all schools. But the south London schools (and St Albans) are actually asking parents to get on board with this and not give smartphones to the kids at all until year 10. It's about changing the culture, like with other things we now know are bad for kids.

Of course many will ignore this and it will take time, but hopefully something will start to change. I think year 10 is quite ambitious, but given it all seems to start in year 4 at my kids' school (8 & 9yos!) anything would be an improvement! There are also options between no and phone at all, and a smartphone, and I think these will increase over the next few years.