Smartphone at school - inappropriate content sharing

[Sagarmatha]

This is a question I'd appreciate help answering.

A child aged 12 to 16 shares sexual or other inappropriate content, eg, video of beheading or torture with another child while on school premises because the school allows smartphones at school.

The recipient does not own a smartphone and comes home traumatised and discloses all to his or her parents.

What is the legal position here?

Given the school's requirement to safeguard all children, could the parents take legal action against the school?

Why take action against the school and not the child who committed the act ?! I think the schools would be on your side, and would love to ban smartphones.

though I’d guess for every parent who would celebrate a ban, the school would get a letter of complaint from another !

this culture of - it’s never the child’s responsibility, the school should have done something, is not helpful.

How could school reasonably prevent this from happening? How have they been negligent? Even if smartphones are banned, kids will still bring them and use them out of sight of adults. It just happens. These are secondary age, not toddlers, so they will not be supervised all the time. The child will no doubt be using data, not school WiFi and I'm not techy enough to k ow whether you can block signal etc. My point is school cannot prevent everything. Parents need to take responsibility and get controls on their kids phones etc.

Surely child should look away from the phone.

I like your thinking. Watching avidly.

The school can't necessarily stop everything, even if they have a policy of no smartphone in school it doesn't stop a child bring a phone into school without the school being aware.

At some point there does have to be some reposobility on the child who shared the inappropriate content. Don't forget children do become criminal responsible over the age of 10 in the UK this isn't just for physical acts. And actually in law their is, say a child shares a sexual image of another child they can be prosecuted and put on the sexual offender register. Children are actually warned about this in PHSE lessons as well. I have been very clear to make sure my children are aware of this as this stays on their records as well. It has been a problem with things like upskerting in schools. It shouldn't just be the schools responsibility, teaching children how to use the Internet appropriately is also the parents responsibility.

but it was real?

I don’t think you can do anything legally. I saw a few things on people’s phones back in the 2000s when I was in school and video phones were first used. The videos were obviously granier and not good quality but I saw things that I shouldn’t have seen on them. Of course it’s not right but it wouldn’t have occurred to me that anyone was to blame. I learnt not to look at videos on people’s phones anymore though.

it’s not nice for kids, it’s really wrong that such videos circulate but the reality is they do and you can’t shield kids from smart phones forever. You have to teach them to use them correctly, put restrictions in place and check their phones consistently when they’re younger. Tell them not to watch things on someone else’s phone if it doesn’t sound like something they should see, tell them to turn anything off straight away that comes up that looks inappropriate. Tell the school if your child has seen a video like that one so the school can speak to pupils involved, maybe include it in PSHE. But I don’t think there’s anything you can do legally

Our school has a smartphones out of sight rule too presumably because there are legitimate reasons why a child might need a smartphone eg bus passes are stored on an app or parents believe that their child will be unsafe without their location on between school and home. I believe that diabetes is often monitored with a smartphone too so an outright ban would never work.

I think that the school would be supportive if they knew that someone was sharing content like you describe so you should work with them rather than against them.

I'm not disputing parental responsibility at all here, let me be clear on that.

But if schools allow smartphones on premises knowing that SmartPhones link to the internet, and the internet contains Bad Stuff, then if that Bad Stuff is shared between children under 16 surely the school is at fault.

Child also at fault. Parents of child also at fault. Expulsion and police / safeguarding etc involved as they would be were we talking about a knife being taken into school.

It was definitely real. See the link above that i posted. It's all real.

It’s a safeguarding issue therefore I would expect the school to investigate the incident and take action as they see fit and provide appropriate support for my child if necessary. If I wasn’t happy I’d pursue the complaints policy. Would I go all out for a complete phone ban and legal action? No. It’s unrealistic, a nightmare to police - you’d have to do bag checks and all sorts, most parents would be up in arms as there’s a lack of phone boxes etc. these days plus bus passes on phones and increasing numbers of homes don’t have land lines. (See threads about the few draconian schools around.) A huge waste of resources for the school in terms of legal fees and relationship forever destroyed with the school. Not worth it IMO.

What's wrong with a basic non smartphone for contacting parent in am emergency?

Schools don't do bag checks for gin or knives do they? Why would an outright ban on smartphones be any different to police?

Banning phones in school would not prevent this incident from occurring.

It would be difficult to police because most teens have a phone, most don't have knives or bottles of gin. No parent would allow their children to knowingly bring a knife or alcohol but many would turn a blind eye to a phone, even encourage it to be hidden in the bottom of the bag. There are totally different issues.

Why can’t smartphones be seen as a danger the way knives, cigarettes and alcohol is. If these can be banned surely smartphones can too.

But it would eliminate a big chunk of time those kids who don’t have access to smartphones would be exposed to this content.

Interesting perspective when you consider the impact smartphones appear to be having on our children.

Parents appear to be turning a blind eye to considerably worse than a bottle of gin (or martini in my case)

Beheadings, the dark web, porn, torture (see above) 👀 👌

I don't agree on the policing point. Lots of schools have announced an outright ban recently incidentally.

It would go a long way to reducing the incidence.

Report the child to the school as a safeguarding issue.

If as you say they are showing the child sexual content report to the police as distributing pornographic material to a minor is an offence. Notify the school you are reporting it to the police.

But the horse has already bolted then. Another child has been traumatised.

How do we prevent this from happening up and down the country, and why is the UK not banning phones in schools like Italy France Spain Holland Australia......

I am still waiting for a lawyer to comment.

I don't want to be the parent having to call the police.

Smartphones are banned at my school. A significant minority of parents defy this rule. Some complain when we confiscate phones. A ban may reduce incidences, but it will not eliminate.

Wrong forum for a lawyer. But if you search on here for schools with draconian phone policies, you’ll see they do random bag searches in order to find smartphones. Most schools don’t allow them, the issue is enforcing it. And that I’m afraid can be squarely laid at the parents and the child themselves. They need to be held responsible for what their child is accessing, having appropriate apps etc. If you’re going to take legal action then perhaps take it at the child and parents who have let their child access disturbing material and are not policing their phone.

My child knows that if I check her phone and find that she has accessed anything inappropriate or the school caught her using it, knows it would be replaced with a Nokia brick.

Would it be worth speaking to a legal firm that advertises ‘free legal advice’. Some offer 30 minutes free advice. That’s if no Mumsnet Lawyers reply?

But many schools in the UK are banning them. Part of the problem is parents are still insisting their children need them for travelling to school. This seems to be a bigger problem in places like London where they need apps for using public transport. 🤔

My son doesn't need his at school and knows full well that school confiscate (and I would have to go and collect it) phones if they are caught with them. He would also have it removed by us if that happened. Also he can't access the Internet on it over data, because we have parental controls on it. But he also has to take some responsibility himself and has been taught to be responsible.

I suppose the equivalent non-phone would be if a child brought in a magazine or book that showed torture.

Could you sue the school then?

(I'm not a lawyer and I don't know)

I suspect that it wouldn't be possible to take legal action.

What legal action would you take? The child is traumatised but if you sued for mental distress then payouts are usually quite low.

Going back to smartphones, if the school has banned their use on school premises then the school has taken appropriate action to reduce the risk of this occurring. The child (presumably) broke a school rule to do this.

Another possible parallel is that schools do teach the holocaust etc and kids are often upset by it. In general as long as topics are considered age appropriate and the curriculum is one that is approved and used by lots of schools parents pretty much have to suck it up.