To think all schools should ban the use of smartphones entirely during school day?

[90sseemedsomucheasier]

I would welcome a ban on smartphones in my child’s secondary school.

At present, in my child’s school they are allowed to take them in, but the rule is that they are to be kept at in their bags and not be seen at all. I think they get a couple of behaviour points if seen, and if seen for a third time then it is confiscated.

I know that, had smartphones existed when I was in school, I would have been a master a checking it without getting caught. I would have been on social media, messaging my friends, secretly listening to music with one AirPod under my hair, looking up answers to questions I didn’t know. I’d have never got in trouble because I would have been stealth like in my use of it. But it would have distracted me, it would have called out to me all day. I’d be waiting for my next check of it and thinking about it. I would therefore not have worked as hard, or chatted to friends as much. It would have fed me a horrible narrative about what I should look like, what my life should be like, how everyone appeared better than me and I’d be full of anxiety and not feel good enough.

This is what is happening to our children today. They don’t have the strength to stay away from them - they may not be seen doing it but they are constantly on them. Even the best behaved kids.

Even if teachers do notice a child having a quick look at their phone, they’ve got so much other stuff to do with the demands of their job - are they going to challenge the child and make more work for themselves or are they going to pretend they haven’t seen it.

Children take secret photos and videos and send them to one another to ridicule and bully. Inappropriate contest is airdropped and shared via WhatsApp groups.

As a parent, I am on it with internet safety (as is dh). We use parental control tools and my year 7 child is not allowed social media,free access to the internet and we monitor their use of their phone each evening. There are screen time limits and phone switches of at 7pm and is not allowed in bedroom.

I often feel like we are going against the grain in doing this. I feel alone and like other parents don’t see the issue with handing our children a device where they can access ANYTHING and absolutely will access anything because they are naturally curious. Curiosity is normal, but the level of information, the horrors, the ideologies and the algorithms that form as a result are not. They are extremely damaging.

I know, when I look online (I know, the irony) that there are other parents that feel the same way. But it is hard in real life. When you’re child goes to secondary school and makes new friends who went to a different primary you have no idea what their parents, and their parenting choices, are like.

Whilst I know my child is safe online in my home, I don’t know when I send them out to school. They can be exposed to all sorts of horrors / porn / ideologies because other parents send their child to school with unrestricted smartphones, whether that is because they don’t understand the dangers, or simply do not care.

do any other parents agree with me that schools should be made to ban smartphones entirely? And by ban I mean asking students to hand them in - either a locker or a faraday pouch on arrival. I get that they are a part of life and needed for safety on journey to and from school (although I would argue that for many they don’t actually even need it for that!). But during school hours they simply do not need them and should not have access to them.

This has been rolled out in some schools already and the benefits are already being seen. I would welcome it in a heartbeat if my child’s school did this!!

What do you think? Would really love to hear people’s opinions -

YABU - children should be allowed access to their phones throughout the school day

YANBU - all schools should ban smartphone access on school sites entirely by asking students to leave them at home, place them in a phone locker or in a faraday pouch

Yeah... Thats what she wrote on her post 🤷

Simply put yes

I never used to allow DS to take his phone to school. There was no need for it - he got the bus from the bottom of the street to school and back again. Anything major happening would quickly get back to me from the school.

However, the school set homework on apps (and teachers often get them to check it) and the bus company now only do the bus pass on their app...

The biggest issue the school have in enforcing their out of sight rule is parents. Parents go ballistic on the school Facebook page or in the WhatsApp group if their child's phone is removed. The third time a phone is confiscated in DS's school a parent has to collect it and some parents go nuclear over it, but at the school rather than their child.

Another parent actually laughed when I punished DS for being punished in school for having his phone out when he knew he wasn't meant to.

Children can absolutely follow phone rules set for them. Parents just need to support schools in doing so (and schools need the time/staffing to be able to implement them).

Read through it again and quote the part where I have written that please.

Fully support banning. Obviously it goes without saying there will be exceptions (e.g. medical); robust policies need developed and put in place, and I would he fully supportive of it. Parents lobbied my son’s school, he’s only in P1, but a ban comes in from Easter and I am delighted.

I hate smartphones in general. I hate looking around any given place and seeing people staring aimlessly at their phone, I hate the pressure people feel under to live upto a standard of how to live and how to look that only exists on social media.

I think signal blockers should be installed in any setting where a phone creates an unwelcome distraction to people.

They are a safety net travelling to and from school.
I disagree with banning them in a school for that reason.

As I said….stupid shitty parents would kick off…’my child wouldn’t check it in the day’…’my child neeeeeeds it’……‘I don’t need help parenting my child.

As teachers, we are telling everyone that we need phones banned during the school day. We need government to invest in lockers so this can be done. No wonder no bugger wants to teach anymore. And until then I’ll keep paying to send my child to a school that has this sensible policy and where they can actually get a decent education.

People are fools.

You can get a handheld device for insulin monitoring. I’ve got one. The battery lasts a lot longer.

Disagree. They are a walking billboard that says 'mug me please'.

Dumb phones are cheap, less desirable to criminals and do the 'safety net' job.

Ours has the confiscation rule, I don’t mind it, DD has had hers removed a couple of times, most recently for 3 days as it was a repeat offence. To make sure the parents are also cross with the child they are not allowed it back until a parent collects it from the office between 3.30 & 4pm the day it is allowed to be returned, thus buggering up work. If I had an important meeting or something it would have stay there until a day I could nip out.

I wouldn’t mind if they changed the rule to handing it in on arrival either, but I would always send her in with her phone or she would always have to come straight home from school and never ask if she could go to a friends, park, shops etc.

After watching the school swap programme on C4, I am not sure how much good it would do though. At the UK school they had to hand their phones in and in the US school they could have them on their desks and it was the UK students who were phone obsessed.

Same here, phones got banned during the school day so they've all got whatsapp on their tablets or laptop!!

No child should be able to put their WhatsApp on a school device - that’s a shitty school set up. Same with using any sort of social media on their own device whilst logged onto a school network. It can be prevented easily - it’s just another example of our shitty, underfunded state system.

Yes.

Dds school allowed phones if put away during class hours but it was too much hassle with kids sneaking them into class so they banned them completely. Lately they have brought in Yondr pouches, paid for by the government (ireland) so the phones are sealed into pouches as they enter the school and unsealed as they leave.

100% agree with this. DD takes her phone in, she knows I’ll come down on her like a ton of bricks if she breaks the rules and gets it confiscated. I would 100% back the schools in this instance

You need to parent and teach your kids to moderate themselves.

You might but 99% of the parents wouldn’t!!! So a ban is the only way.

Aghhhhhh!!! FFS!!

The logistics of collecting in 1500 phones at the beginning of the day then returning them all to the correct pupil at the end of the day before the buses leave doesn't bear thinking about tbh.

It would be super helpful if parents didn't keep texting pupils during lessons though 'I've got to check my phone, it's a text from my mum'. Or if they didn't kick up a stink when the school tries to confiscate a phone.

I wonder how many parents know that quite a few children have second phones. The diligent parents who check messages and track their children may well be only seeing the messages on the 'good' phone. I know some will leave their tracked phone at a friend's house where they've told their parents they'll be staying while they take their second phone to the party elsewhere.

They absolutely should be banned. Ridiculous they have ever been allowed in the first place. As if there aren't enough distractions already.

I sometimes think I live in another world. Am very glad that DC go to a school that says 'no smartphones at all ever' rather than a school where teachers spend half their day collecting phones at the gate, issuing locker keys, policing phones in class, and sorting out confiscated phones. Do they ever get a chance to teach anything?

What an absolute waste of time. No wonder teachers are leaving.

“Checking it” isn’t the issue.

Having this rules means kids aren’t openly using their phones and they’re not glued to them during the day. It’s a sensible rule because kids aren’t ever going to be leaving their phones at home in today’s world so they would end up in their bags anyway.

It stops teachers spending half their day confiscating and then returning them.

A quick check for a minute at lunchtime is still well within the spirit of the rules and teaches control.

I went to school very shortly before smartphones became ubiquitous but I would usually have my phone turned off in the bottom of my bag. I needed it because I walked my sibling home from his primary school bus stop and had to be contactable in an emergency.

But I’m sure I’ll be told that this was wrong because it was “against the rules” and I should have found other ways to be contactable (carrier pigeon?) and there could never possibly need to be told any information, or pass anything on to anyone else.

I had, and will make sure that my kids have their smart phones - ven if the school makes a fuss: several reasons as stated below:

I was horrifically bullied at school. and singled out by some teachers as i was the "poor kid" at school on scolarships and bursaries.

I was diagosed with T1D aged 5, We had no choce but to put me in private education as all schools in my catchment area were terrible, stabbings, arrests, and crap results, and more importantly no school nurses. I tried it in state school for 1 year, they wouldnt cope with dealing with it, and used to shut me in a supply cupbored when i had to check my sugars, or when i went hypo - instead of treating it, would just leave me and call my mum to come get me - i was 5... i couldnt treat by myself at that point, once it dropped past a certain point (another issue was they wouldnt let me check when i felt funny, only on a schedule that they made) i was almost unresponsive- and couldnt rteat myself, so they call mum, who was 20 minutes away at work,

It got to the point where id ended up in hospital several times because i was let down by the school. mum was looking at loosing her job for having to run out multiple times a week.

so we put me in private, where i had the school nurse, and could get sorted whenever i needed to, mum was able to work etc (she was the minority to have a working mum there, and it showed with the teachers)

I got the phone so that i could call her if things got bad, and i needed suport, also so that i could call the diabetes nurses when i needed to, now? i use it for my freestyle libre- the handset it comes with doesnt do the alarms when you sugars rise/drop past certain points etc. I will always now have my smart phone, and when the time comes so will my kids - sadly the diabetes passed on so it is a nescesity.

screw the perils - the advantages outweigh them.

I’m FOR banning phones at school and as a parent of a T1 child she will be told to
only use phone for diabetes related things. Tbh with her pump it just needs to be close to her. She might look up the odd carb count on an app. I’m not worried about it from her POV.

At my child's school phones stay in the bags all day. The school is strict on that and if they see a phone that child risks it being confiscated.

It works fine. I know my child follows the rules. The school has been doing this for years. It's not a new thing.

The school is huge. 1200 pupils handing in a phone each day and collecting it again seems ridiculous. Everyone putting their phone in their bag and behaving by not using them on the school grounds makes much more sense.

The children travel in from all over the place so phones are needed for the journeys. The bus tickets are on their phones as one example.