IEU on the great smartphone ban in schools debate

Will Catholic and independent schools join the government sector in banning smartphone usage by students at school?

In the Term 3 edition of The Point, IEU member Gary Warren called on schools to support the education and wellbeing of students by providing them with regular exercise and limiting their access to smartphones.

In October, the Heads Up Alliance of NSW parents called for a smartphone ban in non-government schools, saying Catholic and independent schools had been ‘left behind’ by failing to introduce a phone ban.

Some states have banned students from having smartphones on their person while attending government schools and during the year, summits in NSW and South Australia considered bans on social media for teenagers.

The federal government has also announced plans to introduce a social media ban for those aged under 16.

In late October, the NSW Department of Education reported on the first year of NSW’s ban on mobile phones in all of its public schools, saying it had ‘improved student learning, concentration, and encouraged young people to socialise more’.

Survey results included:

• 81% of principals surveyed said students’ learning had improved since mobile phones were banned

• 87% of said students were less distracted in the classroom since mobile phones were banned

• 86% said socialising had improved since the ban began.

Gary Warren wants these outcomes for independent schools. ‘Too many of our students are addicted to their devices and can’t self-regulate,’ he told The Point.

‘I am strongly advocating a system whereby students hand over their phones in at the beginning of the day where they are locked away and are collected at day’s end. This system is now in place at many schools around the world and has been extremely successful.’

Gary and The Heads Up Alliance both quote respected social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, who spoke at the recent summit in Sydney.

In his new best-seller The Anxious Generation, Haidt links the increased incidence of mental illness amongst children and adolescents to the emergence of social media and a decline in exploratory play.

Haidt recommends four essentials to end ‘phone-based childhoods’:

1. phone-free schools

2. delay smartphones until 14 years

3. delay social media until 16 years

4. more free play and independence.

The anti-ban view

Writing for The Guardian, Lucy Foulkes, an academic psychologist at the University of Oxford, says Haidt’s best-selling premise about the effect of social media ‘is relevant, but it’s likely to be one piece of a large and complicated puzzle.’

She accepts that social media has transformed social interactions for everyone, and says ‘it’s reasonable to research whether these changes make life meaningfully worse for teenagers, who care so deeply about peer relationships, and how we might help them to navigate this’.

However, she says, ‘it’s an oversimplification to blame social media for the rise in adolescent mental health problems’.

Foulkes says overall rates of mental health issues are higher today because adolescents are much more aware of such issues and report them more, and some of them mislabel lower levels of distress as mental health problems.

‘The majority of teenagers do not have mental health problems, and do have social media, so clearly it’s possible to use social media without incurring notable harm. Some young people are merely unbothered by social media, but some will benefit from it.’

Furthermore, removing social media can have negative effects for marginalised or minority groups of adolescents – such as those who are autistic, LGBTQIA+ or have chronic health problems.

To that list, in Australia, add young people in remote communities: An ABC News report highlighted the plight of a 14-year-old in the Northern Territory who was distressed at the possibility of being cut off from a grandmother she had never met but communicated with via social media. It’s the same problem faced by Tereza Hussein, a 14-year-old refugee who lives in Darwin: a social media ban would mean “losing a direct line to the most important person to her: a grandmother she has never physically met”.

Foulkes says a social media ban would also be ‘impossible to enforce and would not even reliably improve adolescent mental health.’

She predicts it would lead to a ‘two tier society’ of those with and those without smartphones and social media.

She advocates for ‘straightforward steps’ that tech companies could take, such as removing images of self-harm and other graphic content from their platforms, and for parents to teach their children the basics of online safety and to better support them ‘to be open about what happens to them or what they see’.

The reality for teachers Whether you agree with a ban on social media or not – a big question for society at large – the situation for teachers in classrooms is a daily challenge that must be addressed.

Gary Warren says the research is clear: allowing students to carry phones, and the social media apps these devices give them access to, in a school setting, ‘is inherently harmful on several levels’.

The main issues with smartphone usage in schools (Gary Warren):

Negative impact on academic performance:

Spending excessive time on social media platforms, playing games, or engaging in non-educational activities on phones can lead to a decline in study time and a lack of engagement with academic materials, which can result in lower grades, decreased motivation, and compromised learning outcomes.

Circumventing firewalls

Students who carry smartphones can use their devices to ‘hotspot’ internet access thereby circumventing school firewalls, potentially allowing access to access to inappropriate and banned websites while at school.

Physical health issues

Excessive use of mobile phones can contribute to various physical health issues among students.

Mental health concerns

Excessive use of social media platforms can contribute to feelings of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and low self-esteem through constant exposure to curated digital lives and the pressure to achieve social validation.

Reduced face-to-face communication skills

The over-reliance on mobile phones for communication can hamper students’ development of essential face-to-face communication skills.

Cyberbullying and online safety

Mobile phones provide students with continuous access to the digital world, which exposes them to the risks of cyberbullying, online harassment, and privacy breaches.

LINKS:

Gary Warren on tired students (The Point)

Lucy Foulkes on the case against smartphone bans (The Guardian)

Push for ban on smartphones in independent schools (Education HQ)

Gary Warren is a PE teacher with over 40 years’ experience who works at a Melbourne independent school and is a regular contributor to The Point and The Age.