Are there any parents out there who support smartphones in schools?

[LadyJos]

Just curious as all the dialogue out there seems to be about banning them.

All of this, and especially the point about kids learning self reliance

My own DS has significant learning difficulties but now lives happily in the community in his own home, and certainly didn't reach this stage by being persuaded he could never be out of touch with me

He's just one lad of course and everyone's different, but sometimes all this helicopter parenting speaks to me more of a parental need than one of the DCs

Yes. Scotland though so maybe it’s different? It’s a community campus so there’s a library and GP on site and it’s across 3 buildings so there are people in and out and the children roam around to different classes. They can all leave for lunch and various apprenticeships and such too.

I agree in part but my daughter is a caveat here (though expect many would say the same!). I never contact her during the school day and I reinforce it’s only for break times. But we went from being unable to make it a full school day to her being mostly content most of the time. She messages me maybe twice a week now which is genuinely amazing after a really rough start to high school. So for us it was a wonderful tool but my daughter is intensely rule abiding and would never mess around during class or anything - aware that’s part of her neurotypical traits as opposed to how most teenagers are!

Really glad it worked out for you, @PurpleThistle7, and yes it probably helped things along if your daughter's the "rule keeping" type

I had to smile though when a PP mentioned that scrolling on a phone's great for downtime relaxing. Yes it is, but the trouble - as practically all schools will confirm - is that the downtime is too often taken at inappropriate moments

Smartphones arent allowed in eldest DD's high school (not even at break/lunchtime), but everyone smuggles them anyway.

My DD has hers switched off in her bag, she uses it to call me after school to ask for a pick up or tell me she's going to a mates house etc. It's never caused her any issues. If any kids are using phones in the school day without permission they get taken off them. I don't see the drama. Smart phones are a part of life and secondary age kids need to get used to using them responsibly.

Ok put yourself in the kids position.

Mum has gone to work
You are at the bus stop
The driver won't let you on.
School is miles away
And you've no key to get back into the house.

What would you do to get yourself unstuck?
What exactly are you expecting a stranger to do to help?

I think a rule that your phone must be in your bag and switched off is very sensible and I fully support sanctions if that rule is broken. At my DC's school the penalty is that your phone is confiscated for 7 days if a member of staff sees or hears it, or for 24 hours if a parent goes in to collect it. Only one of my DC ever had their phone confiscated and it was a genuine oversight - he had forgotten to switch it off and got a text or something during assembly. I made him wait the week as I think it is a sensible rule and he failed to comply. But I don't see any real harm in phones in bags or lockers as long as they are genuinely not used.
Like lots of kids round here my DC had a 20+ mile journey to school and it was handy to have a means of contact in the event of missed/broken down buses and so on. Plus mine liked to listen to music, play games etc on their journeys to and from school. Of course you can get other devices that do those things but their phones did everything. If there had been recurrent problems I would have taken their phones off them, but between them, my DC managed 21 years at secondary school with a phone in their bags virtually every day, and bar that one occasion there were no adverse incidents. So I think it's OK to have but not use a phone provided the school can monitor the situation and enforce the rules strictly. I don't think they should be allowed out in school time.

In the 80s we had pay phones in the stairwells at school, and phone boxes on most main streets. The ones at school were pretty much constantly in use during breaks.

I would guess I phoned home, or to my parents work, about once a week to change plans for after school or similar. Most friends were about the same.

I don't recognise this at all. No payphones in my school. I went to uni when mobiles were rare & we used the landline in shared flats then argued about the itemised bill - definitely not a lot of calls home.

My secondary had a pay phone in the waiting area at the office. I don't ever remember using it but it was there.

Just the same as I passed about 4 seperate phone boxes or sets of boxes and a couple of shops with payphones on the way home.

But as a mid teen, I started a part-time job at 16, I would regularly call home to say what train I'd be on. I also called taxis from the same payphone, " can I get a taxi to meet me off x train" I even used to carry a phonecard because many people would que for the coin phone while the card phone was empty.

But we are in a time when parents might not be home, or they might have arranged to collect kids en-route home and things can and do go wrong.

The issue is not phones, the issue is social media. And people need to separate the two issues.

We aren't going back to having payphones on the streets, the few that remain are likely to disappear in the next few years as they turn off the copper telephone exchanges.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting we go back to pay phones in the street 😂

There is a middle ground.

My 10 year old has a Nokia dumb phone.

Well if the suggestion is kids shouldn't have phone, how are they met to get in touch?

Not so much when they are in school but en-route too and from?

People also have to keep in mind millions of kids live between 2 houses and probably have grandparents care thrown in too. Not everyone even has landlines these days.
Kids aren't necessarily going home to the same house they left in the morning.

Life organisation is more complicated than it was for many in the 1980.

I don’t really have an issue with phones in bags at school.

Im all for phones in schools - it was the ONLY way my DD could get actual help at the height of being bullied. Help being picked up or just someone to vent to

The teachers did nothing, not even call us when she was physically attacked or told to off herself

For us it was a safety thing, she wasnt safe there and needed a phone for protection. She was ONLY bullied in person on school grounds, none online as she hadnt added anyone but her 2 close friends and had all profiles locked down

It got so bad we now homeschool but i will ALWAYS defend a kid having a phone in school. Any school that says they dont need it for safety is lying through their teeth, likely cos they dont want the extent of the bullying to go public - as was the case with DD old school

A phone is a parents choice NOT the schools

I dont know the exact situation but any combination of the following-

Borrow money off a friend
Borrow money off a stranger
Not forget money in first place
Not forget key in first place
Knock on neighbors door for help
Walk to school ( be very late )
Go back home and climb over fence to try back door
Etc etc

Whatever way, lessons will be learnt, and resilience built.

Also, how does calling mum help?

Those are unrealistic and unworkable.
My friend's DD went to school 18 miles away. Walking home was not an option.

Do you really think a child would and could ask a stranger for money?

If the neighbours were mumsnetters they won't answer the door anyway.

The friends had already left and gone home.

You can't turn the clock back for money and the key.

Yeah, because big tech is famously well regulated, isn’t it?

Don’t be so naive.

Look who say where at Trump’s inauguration and ask yourself who is really in charge.

Smartphones and social media are horrific for mental health, attention and brain development.

Almost none of the examples on this thread (except the diabetes monitoring) require anything more than a dumb phone and a digital
camera.

Children should be able to make mistakes and be idiots without it being recorded forever and shared around at school.

They should be able to read and explore the world without everything being spoon fed to them in 30 second videos that damage their attention span and mis-wire their dopamine systems.

An 8 year old recently ran up thousands of £ of debt on You Tube because her ridiculous parents gave her an iPhone and no oversight. Some parents can’t be trusted to stick with the current (inadequate) rules, let alone understand the acute, insidious dangers of tech.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia

https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/03/our-eight-year-old-daughter-spent-over-8500-on-the-apple-app-store

As I said, I don't know the exact situation. There's always a way tho. It was not a life or death moment I'm sure.

People managed without phones. It might be difficult and uncomfortable but that's exactly what's needed to grow up.

How does calling mum help?

And what about the friends whose lessons she is interrupting with messages?

This has to be a wind up.

No one wants their kid to be so needy they have to be able to message friends in the 2 hours between breaks at school.

People managed without phones

Because there were phone boxes everywhere. This has been already stated.

I rarely see a public phone these days, and an unvandalised one is even rarer.

You can get little clips that go on your bra to remember the boob you used.

I also used a bf app because I liked the data and what it told me - but I am an adult with a brain formed without smartphones and social media.

Smartphones make lots of things easier - but there is very little that can’t be done in a different way.

Bf - get a clip for your bra and/or a notebook to write down the info

travel chaos - dumb phones text and call

Pictures of science experiments - digital camera that requires downloading and printing or emailing rather than instant sharing

Except it isn’t good for your brain at all.

Social media isn’t relaxing, it doesn’t help your brain ‘switch off’ or any of the other things downtime should be.

It’s designed to keep you scrolling, consuming the adverts and getting the repeated highs that lead to addiction.

It’s really, really bad for downtime.