The education minister’s decision to promote mobile phone-free schools is to be welcomed and chimes with the sentiment of many educationalists and parents, as well as researchers who have produced studies confirming the downside for children of the smartphone age in which we are all living.
Schools continue to make great use of smartphone apps and social media to share information with parents and also provide a welcome insight into children’s learning experiences.
Technology can’t be ignored, and nor should it. Education involves preparing children for the future by equipping them with knowledge, skills and experiences to cope with the challenges they may face as they make their way in the world. Teaching children to navigate the internet, social media and other ICT skills is both necessary and responsible.
When discussing enforcement of the proposed ban, Paul Givan commented that the key was “embedding a culture” within schools.
Yet the cultural change that needs to happen relates less to the presence of mobile phones in schools and more to the prevalence of their use by children and adults in the home and how this impacts upon a child’s capacity to self-regulate, physically and emotionally, and to relate and communicate with others.
The minister is right to raise the issue, but the phones-in-school focus is largely a secondary concern.
Schools are tightly-run human institutions. Phone usage by pupils in primary schools is rare and concerns relate more to the issue of children storing phones in bags in classes or staff having to store these expensive items until home time.
Post-primary schools have their own policies and routines to manage phone access, which can be a positive during specific lessons.
The problem runs much deeper and is less to do with children and more about how we as adults have permitted a culture and practice to develop whereby many children live an increasingly risk averse, phone-based childhood.
In the age of play dates and helicopter parents, handing a phone or iPad device to a child to buy adults some down time (often on phones) is understandable, yet it has also helped nurture an addictive culture which discourages conversation, physical engagement and risk in any shape or form.
The profound speech and language difficulties still prevalent in children in their early years of primary education, the toileting problems, the social and emotional challenges, the levels of anxiety being reported amongst school age girls in particular, are all at unprecedented levels. These cannot be dismissed as unrelated to changes in society and the manner in which children are being raised in the family home.
Connectedness, engagement and words spoken and heard have been casualties of advances in technology. The smartphone blocks experiences, rendering us “forever elsewhere”, in the words of sociologist Sherry Turkle.
We are living in a post-deferential society and, whilst there are reasons to be grateful for that (as evidenced by the appalling findings laid out in the scoping Inquiry into historical sexual abuse in religious-run schools), there has also been a dramatic change in the nature of relationships which has manifested itself in difficulties we continue to struggle to cope with as a society.
Last week, the city in which I was born, Phoenix, Arizona, recorded its 100th consecutive day of 100 degree-plus temperatures, setting a new record. This was no fluke and, of course, is related to and evidence of the consequences of global warming, something only the most deluded amongst us will deny at this point. Governments across the globe have long acknowledged and been endeavouring to address this issue.
Yet the empirical evidence of the many ways in which children are changing and facing challenges in a manner previously not apparent has not led to any serious and fundamental examination as to why this is all happening now.
In his book The Anxious Generation, American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt makes the case that the mental health crisis engulfing his native country – and other developed societies – has been fuelled by the onset of the smartphone era which brought us social media and all-consuming online gaming.
Girls’ self-esteem has been detrimentally impacted by the pursuit of affirmation on social media. Anyone who has been on holiday or at a concert cannot but notice the frequency with which many girls pose for photographs, which invariably are shared on social media. Negative comments, or even the perception of insufficient engagement by others, can shatter confidence and leave a vulnerable young mind feeling isolated and rejected.
Sometimes we seem to forget that children are just younger versions of the rest of us. The invention of the smartphone has transformed how we communicate, the manner in which we access entertainment, our shopping habits and how we wile away the time. There is a lot to celebrate about that. But there is a downside, which includes how childhood has been transformed, and we haven’t acknowledged that, never mind considered the implications.
Regulation is most effective when it shapes culture and practice. The smoking ban provides powerful evidence of that.
What is needed today is a profound change in how society views the role of parenting in the smartphone age. There is much to do to reverse the damage being done.
