Smartphone Bans and Schools Solving Societal Issues
Over the last month, I’ve been on the national airwaves discussing smartphones and whether children under 13 should have them. You might wonder why someone like me would be asked to talk about this issue given that I’m a teacher and not a government representative or a PR guy from a mobile phone provider.
Yes, it seems that the best people suited to banning Smartphones for under-13s are your local primary schools. In fact, according to the Minister for Education, a “no smartphone” pledge adopted by some primary schools in Greystones, Co Wicklow, could be extended countrywide. I believe it’s doomed to failure.
Before I talk about why, let me start by saying that I agree that Smartphones should be banned for young people. If you asked me this five years ago, I would have said the opposite. In fact I did back in 2018.
However, I have changed my mind. In the world of technology 2018 was a different lifetime and the Smartphones of 2018 are a very different Smartphone to the ones being used in 2023. I’m not talking about the hardware. It’s what is now being done on them.
The big change for me was the rise in social media and gaming aimed at very young people. It would be ridiculous to lay the blame squarely on Musical.ly (now TikTok) or any of the hundreds of games that allow user interaction because they, in themselves, are only part of the problem. These services don’t directly target children. In fact, almost all of them have a minimum age limit. Is it their responsibility to ensure that children younger than that age use them? Perhaps, it’s like blaming Stanley Kubrick if a child got a hold of The Shining back in the 1980s.
However, it would also be fair to say that these apps and games are designed to keep a person on them. For example, let’s take a game like Homescapes. If you’ve never played, load it up and see how long it takes for you to stop playing. At every juncture the game offers the user something to keep them playing, whether that’s time-limited power-ups, extra lives, bonus puzzles, social challenges, and so on. For example, take Facebook’s Reels — it’s like a can of Pringles — it’s really hard to stop watching them. The reason behind this is because the algorithms are designed to keep you personally interested and engaged. The videos trigger something in our brains that say — ok, just one more. Twitter is an app I engage with and I sometimes find myself scrolling mindlessly through my feed where, somehow, every few posts, something will catch my eye and keep me there. Let’s name it for what it is: addiction.
There’s a reason why addictive things like cigarettes, alcohol and gambling all have laws where it is deemed that children should not access them. Should we be thinking of smartphone ownership in the same way?
Smartphones aren’t only addictive, they are extremely powerful — both for good and bad. If you ask a parent why they have bought their kid a smartphone, they’ll almost always say it’s so they can keep tabs on them.
However, smartphones also allow children to take photos and videos and share them instantly with millions of other people. That’s grand if your child likes photographing butterflies on flowers. It’s not so grand if they are secretly recording their teacher or videoing a fight on yard. It’s not so grand if they are sending intimate pictures of themselves to their boyfriends and girlfriends or complete strangers. It’s not so grand if they are using them to talk to other children about how to self-harm.
When parents say they give their children phones to keep tabs on them, I wonder are they really keeping tabs on them. I’m not talking about where they physically are, but what they are doing with these devices.
For me, I would now describe a smartphone as a weapon. It simply can’t be trusted in the hands of someone that doesn’t know what they are doing. While, again, it would be simplistic to solely blame them on the rising trend in young people’s anxiety levels and mental health issues, it has to play a part. If you’re as old as me, can you imagine going out these days like we did before camera phones? It must be stressful knowing that one is under camera surveillance at all times. I rarely go out at night anymore but on the rare occasions I do, it’s the one thing I notice. I’m being recorded almost all the time — whether it’s group selfies or videos of dancing. (A video of me dancing is not something anyone wants to see — this YouTube video below should be evidence enough!)
I imagine that nothing I’ve said is new to anyone reading this. I think the days of saying that parents just need to be educated about what their kids are doing are over. We know. We know giving a smartphone to a baby in a buggy is not a good idea and doing it a lot is likely to cause speech and language issues. We know that giving a young child unfiltered access to YouTube is likely to bring up videos that are at best age-inappropriate and at worst highly-sexualised. We know that letting our 8-year old child have their own TikTok account and that while they’re making videos of themselves making up dance moves that start with “hi, guys…please subscribe to my channel” that they are likely to find themselves in the company of older people making dance moves that may be described as more suggestive. We know that when we buy an 18-rated game for our children that they are gong to witness things that are absolutely not ok, even for people over 18 to be seeing. And even though we know, we seem helpless to stop it because the worst crime of all isn’t basically giving your child access to the most harmful content in the world, it’s that they will be social pariahs from the classmates if we don’t. When we were growing up, our parents might ask us if Johnny jumped into a fire or jumped off a cliff, would you? It seems this generation are more interested in keeping in with Johnny. And perhaps that’s where the real problem is.
That brings me back to the airwaves — here are two of my radio appearances if you want to here them.
However, as I listen about the schools in Greystones and, more recently, Waterford, one notion continuously occupies my thoughts: this is more than just about smartphones. It’s about the responsibility we share in protecting the next generation.
When the Minister for Education calls for schools to enforce a ban on smartphones for children under 13, it seems perplexing to me. The onus is being shifted to schools to solve the problem. Yet, in all my years, I haven’t heard of a single school supplying or selling smartphones to children. The issue, in fact, stems from a place much more familiar: our homes and our society.
As I said before, there are restrictions and guidelines for numerous activities: buying alcohol, voting, driving — to name a few. These regulations exist to ensure the safety of individuals, particularly vulnerable ones. If an adult buys alcohol for a child, it is the adult that is at fault. If an adult doesn’t make his child wear a safety belt in a car, it is the adult that takes the rap. If an adult lets his child vape, there’s only one place the finger of blame is pointing. Why are smartphones, with their vast minefield of hazards, any different?
As I said, we already know children, brilliant and curious as they might be, aren’t equipped with the maturity to navigate the digital terrain safely. There’s no physical protective barrier to shield them from explicit content or predatory behaviours. The best analogy I’ve come up with regarding giving children a smartphone is that it’s like putting your kid on an aeroplane on their own to New York and telling them to get to an apartment. Chances are they might get there unharmed but chances are they’ll get lost and no sane adult would dream of doing that. Yet in the virtual world, they probably do it every single day.
Now, I understand that integrating technology into education is crucial. I haven’t spent the last 20 years promoting educational technology for nothing! The present is digital, after all. Our children need to be prepared. Despite a series of haphazard plans from the Department of Education, schools have done an admirable job in introducing technology to students. Using secure devices and filters, educators often harness the power of the internet to elevate learning experiences. It’s laudable, necessary, and yet, it’s only one part of the equation.
Outside the classroom, the protective bubble bursts. The smartphones, often without any restrictions, become a Pandora’s box.
We simply can’t expect schools to solve this problem. Protecting children from potential smartphone dangers isn’t a school’s duty, although we play our part; it’s a collective responsibility. Parents, guardians, internet service providers, phone retailers, policymakers, the State— we all have a stake in this.
Families must open up conversations with their children about the responsibilities and risks associated with smartphones. Parents should be aware of what their children access and should utilise tools and applications that ensure their child’s online safety.
Retailers can play their part by establishing stricter guidelines and possibly parental consent when selling smartphones to youngsters. Internet service providers should be more proactive in creating child-safe browsing options.
Politicians, the very individuals who have the power to enact change, should pave the way for good policies, guidelines and laws that put our children’s safety first.
As society tries to catch up with the rapidly evolving technological advancements, it’s our duty to ensure that our youngest members of society are equipped, educated, and protected. A smartphone, while one of the most life-changing pieces of technology that has ever been produced, is also a potential weapon. Like all weapons, it should be handled with care. So, let’s not just leave it up to schools, we need everyone to come together to ensure no further damage is done.
