The Government has announced this week that they will release new guidance advising headteachers to ban the use of mobile phones in schools. The news comes after many other countries have done the same, with countries such as France, the Netherlands and Italy all banning the devices and seeing marked improvements in exam results, overall academic performance and better mental health in pupils. Unesco estimates that one in four countries have banned smartphones in school, either through law or guidance. Its global report on using technology in education cited large-scale international assessment data that indicated a “negative link” between excessive use of digital technology and student performance.
It is welcome news to campaign groups such as Us for Them who are calling for a tobacco-style regulatory framework for smartphones ‘that places a duty on manufacturers, suppliers and content providers to prove the safety of their products and services in the hands of children, pending which those products and services must be restricted for.’
We have also called for a ban on smartphones in schools with Lucy Marsh of FET telling the Women and Equalities Select Committee in May that unsupervised access to smartphones was one of the major reasons behind children watching online porn. Research from the Children’s Commissioner earlier this year found that the average age for children to start viewing porn is now 13, with some children, particularly boys first watching it at age 9.
The report’s analysis also demonstrated ‘a significant link between an early age of first exposure to pornography and frequency of exposure in later years. The age of first exposure and frequency of exposure were shown to be closely linked to the likelihood of a young person viewing violent content online. Frequent users of pornography were also more likely to have real-life experience of an aggressive or degrading sex act.’
The news of the ban on Monday has been welcomed by many parents and teachers as a victory for child safeguarding and common sense, but a significant number of parents on social media have objected to the policy, claiming they want their child to have a phone on them in school for ‘safety reasons’. Some parents believe that it is ‘unsafe’ for children to be allowed to travel to and from school without having a mobile phone and that they need to use location tracking to monitor their child’s movement.
It is not difficult to understand why parents may be worried about their child’s safety, but children have travelled to and from school without mobile phones for decades. There have been very few reports of children being abducted on their journey between home and school. So, what does the evidence show? Are children really less safe in 2021 compared to thirty or forty years ago?
Not many parents allow their children to play outside with their friends or walk to school on their own compared to the 1970s or 1980s, but the reality is that children are actually safer today than 40 years ago. Figures show that there has been a 75% reduction in the number of children killed on the roads in England and Wales, either as passengers in vehicles or as pedestrians, mainly due to increased safety features in cars and better signage on roads.
Child pedestrian fatalities have fallen by a significant amount since the 1980s. The highest figure in the last four decades was 396 child pedestrian deaths in 1983, falling to low of 26 deaths in 2013. The figures decrease further for more recent years, with fatalities for pedestrians of all ages down 43% from 671 to 385 between 2004 and 2022. Serious injuries also decreased by 42% in this timeframe. Interestingly the most common contributory factor attributed to pedestrians in fatal or serious collisions with another vehicle was ‘pedestrian failed to look properly’.
Anyone who was at school in the 1970s and 80s will remember assemblies teaching children to remember the Green Cross Code ‘Stop, Look and Listen’, but with so many children now being driven to school, do schools even teach children how to cross the road safely anymore?
Another concern of parents is child abduction and murder. Statistically, children are at no more risk than 30 years ago as the number of child murders has stayed virtually the same. On average, 79 have taken place each year in England and Wales since the 70s. Of these, just 11 are committed by a stranger, and while abductions make the front pages, only five to seven actually occur a year.
There were 54 victims of homicide aged under 16 years in the year ending March 2022. As in previous years, the most common suspect was a parent or step-parent. The ONS says ‘it is very rare for those under 16 years to be killed by a stranger, with five such offences in the last year, similar to previous years’.
Yet although the statistics are encouraging, as a nation we are worrying more about our offspring. Studies repeatedly show that parents are more fearful for their children than in the 70s, with mothers particularly worrying about how much time they are spending with their children. The Changing Face of Motherhood report found nine out of 10 mothers feel guilty about how much time they spend with their kids and felt that the 1970s and 80s were the best decades to raise them. This report was commission in 2011, so how much more must mothers worry about their children more than 10 years later with increased pressure on work-life balance due to the cost of living crisis?
And this increased level of anxiety is being passed on to younger generations.
The Children’s Society Good Childhood report 2022 revealed a deeply concerning continuing decline in children’s wellbeing. It showed that around 1 in 16 (6%) of those aged 10 to 15 are unhappy with their lives, and almost 1 in 8 (12%), an estimated 562,000 of 10–15-year-olds, are unhappy at school.
The report also found that girls are significantly more unhappy with their appearance than boys, with almost 1 in 5 (18%) – the equivalent of an estimated 411,000 of 10–15-year-old girls unhappy with their looks compared to 10% of boys. This is a worrying jump for girls from 1 in 7 (15%) being unhappy with their appearance ten years ago. There are reams of evidence to connect an increase in social media use with mental health decline in teenagers, with girls being particularly negatively affected by heavy social media use. The results of excessive use in children include depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation, envy and communication issues.
This should be extremely worrying for parents considering that according to a report by Common Sense Media:
- 1 in 4 teens is a heavy social media user, using at least two different types of social media each day.
- 51% of teens visit social networking sites on a daily basis.
- More than a third of teens visit their main social networking site several times a day.
All of this evidence indicates that banning the use of mobile phone in schools is a good thing. It is not just classrooms where children should not be distracted by their phones; during breaktimes children should be socialising with their friends and getting exercise outside, not scrolling through social media or taking selfies and videos.
Research from the Education Policy Institute and The Prince’s Trust said that teenagers’ mental health is being damaged by heavy social media use but found that exercise can have a positive effect on children’s mental health. Without mobile phones as a distraction during breaktimes, children will be free to entertain themselves through exercise and sport, which surely has to be a win for both children and teachers.
Rather than protesting about schools banning the use of mobile phones during the day, parents should be welcoming the news whilst also modelling healthy behaviour to their children. As adults we are just as guilty of becoming distracted and stressed by our addiction to smartphones. We all benefit from time away from screens, so perhaps families need to schedule screen-free periods into their daily schedules to have some time together. Imagine what you could do with an hour or two without a mobile phone in the evening – go for a walk, play a game, cook together, or even just talk.
Lucy Marsh is the Communications and PR Officer at FET. lucy.marsh@familyeducationtrust.org.uk