As concerns around how children use social media have caught the attention of many schools, we meet one head teacher who has banned smartphones.
By the time they reach the age of 11, nine out of ten children in the UK own a mobile phone. Whilst most young adults spend hours on their phones every day, almost three-quarters of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 have encountered one or more potential harms online.
This raises the question of how someone as young as 13 years-old can navigate through content that could be potentially harmful to them.
“We’re actually changing the fundamental nature of what it means to be a child,” Dr Rangan Chatterjee told Channel 4. There is a “blurred boundary between the lives children lead online and the ‘real world’.”
Research has shown that excessive screen time can introduce younger audiences to content that encourages behaviour such as eating disorders, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
Whilst children are developing through the most fundamental years of their lives, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras told the New York Post, “People don’t fully appreciate that hyper-real and hyper-immersive screen experiences can blur reality at key stages of development.”
Time spent on smartphones has also been seen to correlate with poor performance in school.
The Headteacher of Hampstead Secondary School, Matthew Sadler, has taken a head-on approach to banning smartphones on site, with a phone-pouch system, in an attempt to eliminate the distraction phones present to students throughout the school day.
Sadler told Artefact that although policies were already in place to ensure phones weren’t out or seen during the school day, other issues began to occur.
“The vast majority of our students were following the rule, but still had a phone in their pocket that was buzzing. They still had a phone in their pocket that they could sense they were getting notifications, and we were aware that this was something that played on student’s minds.”
Sadler argues that simply just knowing that a phone is in your pocket is a distraction in itself: “Even the idea that you might be getting messages, that you can access your phone, is something that is a distraction to all of us, and certainly a distraction to these young people who have grown up in a time where mobile phones and social media have been much more accessible.
Although teachers didn’t necessarily see students with a phone out or using them, “there were still a smaller number of students who would go to the toilets, into the cubicles, and they would check their phones. They would find quiet corners and nooks and crannies. There was still time that students would spend on their phones during the school day.” This meant that queues to the bathroom would be longer as well as access to toilets becoming harder.
Growing up in an era of smartphones, constantly being surrounded by them, Sadler tells Artefact that he wanted to create a space where students had a guaranteed amount of time that they could be away from their phones.
“We wanted to try and support students to get into habits where they could actually go for much longer periods of time without accessing their phone. If they can do that in school, then they can do it outside of school as well. We felt it would have a really positive effect on mental health if we could support students.”
The newly implemented phone pouch system includes giving the students a magnet-sealed foam pouch, “they go through their day with this, so their phone is not in their pocket, it’s in their bag, and not buzzing against their leg. But in an insulated pouch.”
As soon as students arrive in the morning it is asked of them at the gate to place their phones into the pouch which are then locked. They cannot be unlocked by students but at the end of the school day, there are unlocking stations students can access. Avoiding any complications that could occur if the school held onto the phones.
Whilst parents have shown great support for this policy, not all students have been on board. A few referred to the nature of the system as “prison-like”, resulting in some students finding alternative ways to access phones.
There are pouch checks from time to time as “students can come up with some quite creative ways around it. Examples of that include students putting a calculator instead of a phone and so you think there’s a phone in there, but really that’s just their calculator.”
Some students have been caught carrying multiple phones or one for a friend. “We have some students who might have a like a dud phone that they make a big show of putting in their pouch, but in reality, it was never working anyway.”
“I think the most creative way we heard about was the idea of just cutting off the bottom of a pouch with a family knife, fixing it back together with Velcro and then, and then, just kind of taking it out. But, interestingly, you’ll never get rid of all of the ways that some might use to get around the system,” Sadler admitted.
“If you’ve kind of dodged the system and have a mobile phone out in school, where previously we confiscate it and give it back to the student at the end of the day. We now have it that we confiscate it, and the parent or carer has to come in, collect the phone and you have a conversation with them about it.”
This is done so that it’s “deliberately inconvenient.” What you find is that parents and carers come in, who tend to be quite frustrated which helps to ensure their child complies with the rule.
Some parents have gone as far as insisting that the phones be kept at the school as they’ve seen it as an “effective function”, especially with kids who are addicted to their phones in and outside of school.
Sadler finds that there are also growing numbers of parents, “who don’t get their child a mobile phone. We want to give parents the confidence, particularly with parents of younger students, that you don’t have to get them a mobile phone. The safety that comes with being able to communicate to and from school is something that can be achieved in different ways.”
As a result of this new policy, “it’s already had an impact on the atmosphere in school. You start to see students talking more comfortably and more easily at break and lunchtime. They haven’t got the thought that something might be on their phone.”
It has also reduced cyberbullying and has addressed the addiction social media has had on younger audiences.
16-year-old Nathan* told Artefact: “Although I don’t feel as though I use my phone that much as I’m out a lot, especially playing football surprisingly my daily screentime is around 13 hours and 10 mins. But I don’t feel like I’m on my phone that much.”
Nathan tells us that he usually goes on his phone mainly to talk to his friends on Snapchat and to go on TikTok, “I get a lot of content about things people my age care about, such as lifestyle changes and how to start weight training and growing muscle.”
This recently introduced system has already been seen to be effective worldwide. At Eastlake Secondary School in Colorado Springs, head teacher Cassandra Berry recognised the attention having phones on site brought to fights in school.
“We had a couple of fights, and unfortunately, one of them was taped by a student in the classroom and posted on social media.” Sparked by messages sent over social media. “We wanted to make sure to nip that in the bud,” Berry told Time magazine.
But even when not intending to, “you don’t have to interact with content that isn’t appropriate, it can still appear on your ‘for-you-page’.”
16 year-old student
After attending a Dave Chappelle comedy show that required audience members to lock away their phones during the performance, she was inspired to implement a similar system.
Berry signed a contract with Yondr, a tech company that sells locked pouches for cell phones to help facilitate this policy.
Eastlake Secondary School is now one of thousands across the world that have turned to Yondr as a solution to combat phone addiction. Yondr now serves more than one million students in 21 countries as well as the US.
Whilst such policies are implemented worldwide can we expect the government to legally mandate phone-free schools?
Labour MP and former teacher, Josh MacAlister, is hoping to push his “safer phones” private members’ bill through the House of Commons this year.
His bill aims to raise the age at which children can consent to data sharing without any parental permission from 13 to 16, which he said would make it harder for social media companies to make “content so addictive.”
Although the government has ruled out backing his proposal, the MP said that the government was “open-minded,” which would make it harder for social media companies to make content “addictive.”
* To protect the confidentiality of students their names have been changed across this piece.
Featured image by Robin Worrall via Unsplash CC.