Emilie Silverwood-Cope: A school ban on mobile phones doesn’t matter: parents, the rest is up to us

A study of smartphones in schools, conducted by the University of Birmingham and published in The Lancet, compared the rules at 30 different secondary schools (1,227 students).

They looked at schools with a ban on smartphones throughout the school day versus schools that allowed children to have them at break times.

I was looking forward to reading this because I am very much in the ‘ban them’ camp. I am delighted that my children are at schools who threaten confiscation if they so much as hear a WhatsApp notification.

I have firmly and publicly nailed my colours to the ‘ban’ mast because I have heard nothing but negative things about the mix of school and smartphones. The report, however, suggests that a ban in schools has little impact on whether pupils get higher grades or have better mental wellbeing. All is not lost though for authoritarians like me. The research does show that prolonged use of smartphones had a negative impact on students’ wellbeing and mental health.

In other words, what happens in schools isn’t the only thing that matters. Turns out what happens at home is pretty important too – I know! Parents do matter!

The children who spent longer on their phones were shown to be less physically active, had poorer sleep, lower grades and were more disruptive in the classroom. Essentially, it doesn’t matter so much if they attend a school with a ban if they are going to spend 4pm to 11pm scrolling. Let’s put it another way... just as schools are not going to solve the obesity crisis by making sure children have a healthy lunch Monday to Friday, they are also not going to undo the impact of children being on their smartphones during the many hours they spend outside of school.

The report is already being criticised for its methodology but that aside it has done nothing to change my mind about banning smartphones.

First, let’s be clear about what is being banned. What we are really discussing is whether children should be able to use their compact television, camcorder, tape recorder, camera in school and whether they should be carrying the entire internet in their pocket.

Second, the study did not look at the impact on bullying and ‘social skills’ a ban can have. This is like doing a study on childhood obesity and not looking at whether children have access to unhealthy foods – in other words, it’s a key issue. One of the main reasons schools ban smartphones is to better manage the ‘social skills’ of pupils.

At an education conference I attended, a room full of teachers were asked to put their hand up if their time had been taken up by the following social media issues: cyberbullying, threats of violence and pupils seeing sexual content. Every hand went up and stayed up. This had become such a pervasive issue that one teacher, responsible for pastoral care, said social media-related problems (from violence to mental health) took up her entire day.

Schools talk about an increase in poor pupil behaviour. What they really mean is violence and smartphones play a role in this too. Children tease each other online and will provoke each other into fights. This has always happened, of course, but now it’s filmed and shared across social media. None of us want our children in chaotic schools with teachers wasting their time managing something that’s so easily fixed by prohibiting the cause.

Evidence is piling up that smartphones are a safeguarding issue. Just last month, a 15-year-old boy was charged with voyeurism after his smartphone was discovered hidden in a toilet at a secondary school in Dundee. As Tom Bennett, the UK school school behaviour advisor to the Department for Education, wrote on X/Twitter: “I’ve visited 700+ schools and never seen any school regret banning them.”

It’s because of issues like bullying and access to graphic content that a parent-led, grassroots campaign, Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC), has gained such momentum. Amy Ruffell, the regional lead of Cambridgeshire SFC, said of this report: “[We] welcome this study further supporting the concerning link between children’s smartphone and social media use and poor mental health outcomes. The report says that school bans are not enough, which is why the 200,000+ parents and carers connected though Smartphone Free Childhood are working alongside local schools, government and community groups to change this worrying trend where children are given their own phones younger and younger.”

What this report shows isn’t that a school ban doesn’t matter. Rather, it shows that some schools are doing their bit but they are not the only stakeholders that matter.

Parents… the rest is up to us.

If you would like to contact your local Smartphone Free Childhood group head to smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/.

Read more Parenting Truths from Emilie Silverwood-Cope every month in the Cambridge Independent.