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Teachers Urge Parents Not To Buy Children Smartphones (bbc.com) 90

Posted by msmash from the enough-is-enough dept.
Monmouthshire schools have launched what they believe is the first countywide policy in the UK asking parents not to give smartphones to children under 14, affecting more than 9,000 students across state and private schools.

The initiative follows rising cyber-bullying reports and concerns that some children spend up to eight hours daily on devices, with students reportedly online at 2, 3, and 4 in the morning. Hugo Hutchinson, headteacher at Monmouth Comprehensive, said schools experience "much higher levels of mental health issues" linked to smartphone addiction, noting that children's time is largely spent outside school where many have unrestricted device access despite existing school bans.
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Teachers Urge Parents Not To Buy Children Smartphones More

Teachers Urge Parents Not To Buy Children Smartphones

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  • Or just be parents (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:01AM (#65507310)

    My kid is near to graduating high school but for $reasons it was necessary that she have a phone when she was much much younger.

    However, I locked it down hard to block adult sites, TikTok, instagram, other social media trash, etc, had many 1:1 chats with her about the trash online because I know she was still exposed through other kid's and just being alive in this country, and I took her phone every night at bed time and returned it in the morning on her way to school.

    Today: straight A's, socially well adjusted, and can clearly understand that 99% of the net is trash as well as how to find the other 1%. Over time as she demonstrated the ability to deal with it I removed restrictions. Today she has unlimited access to everything and no interest in stupid shit. She mostly uses the net to socialize with her RL friends in private spaces/games and do school work/research.

    Parenting can be hard and is definitely time consuming. All those kids described in the article with poor behavior / net usage patterns have been failed by their parents. Too lazy or apathetic or dumb to properly parent. I wish those kids the best in their futures but their "parents" haven't done right by them.

    This is a "failure to parent" problem, not a "kids with phones" problem. They're trying to stick a bandaid on a gaping wound.

    • I guess she never told you about her burner phone, eh?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )

        I guess she never told you about her burner phone, eh?

        Maybe not you, but the school is aware since they confiscated it on sight. :-) Keep in mind, if we can get the phones out of the classroom that would be a big win.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
      My oldest is 14, so the cake isn't baked yet, but I agree with you that parenting makes a big difference. We limit phone time and keep the phone in our room at night. Sites and contacts are limited. No discord, facebook, etc...

      One thing I learned by being the youngest of 6 kids is that kids are very creative when it comes to making poor decisions. I understand that I can't keep them safe from everything in the world, so I do my best to teach the well, then I hope some of it sinks in.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by armada ( 553343 )
        Mine is 13, I'm curious, why did you give your kid a phone at all if you clearly understand the problem?
    • Maybe we need an ePhone? 'e' for Education. A SmartPhone with limited functionality. Remember the original iPhone, factory apps only, no downloadable 3rd party apps. The ePhone having remotely defined Parental and School Controls, sort of like how an Apple Watch is configured from a paired phone. School controls can be things like test mode, where all apps are closed and only the calculator may be launched. Two browser white lists, one school supplied, one parent defined. Maybe the ePhone can recognize scho
      • I believe there are a bunch of these. Gabb phone, pinwheel are two Iâ(TM)ve heard of, here are two more: https://reallyareyouserious.co... [reallyareyouserious.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by armada ( 553343 )
        How about no phone?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by drnb ( 2434720 )

          How about no phone?

          When I was a kid payphones were everywhere. I had a quarter stashed in my wallet for an emergency, per my parents instructions.

          I'll accept the notion that a phone with a contact list set by parents, and an optional parental control to restrict dialing to the contact list, is a modern incarnation of the above.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by armada ( 553343 )
            This is a viable alternative since there are no pay phones. The only way I have found to successfully do this is with an iPhone with only a few approved numbers in the phone book. They are all set to emergency contacts. The phone's screen time parental module is set to only allow calls from numbers in list. Lock the phone with a password and don't give it to the kid. You now have an iphone who's only capabilities are to call or be called by who you decide. All attempts to do this without the lockdown fail a

    • My kid is near to graduating high school but for $reasons it was necessary that she have a phone when she was much much younger.

      However, I locked it down hard to block adult sites, TikTok, instagram, other social media trash, etc, had many 1:1 chats with her about the trash online because I know she was still exposed through other kid's and just being alive in this country, and I took her phone every night at bed time and returned it in the morning on her way to school.

      Today: straight A's, socially well adjusted, and can clearly understand that 99% of the net is trash as well as how to find the other 1%. Over time as she demonstrated the ability to deal with it I removed restrictions. Today she has unlimited access to everything and no interest in stupid shit. She mostly uses the net to socialize with her RL friends in private spaces/games and do school work/research.

      Weird. I achieved the same thing with two separate children and never once needed to lock down their phones or Internet access. But yeah, authoritarian responses always turn out well, so we should encourage that rather than the emotional/mental/spiritual growth of our children to handle themselves within adult society.

      Why take chances? Why not force the issue like you did? Freedom and Liberty are not that important. It is more important to have an obedient child than a fully formed adult.

  • The advisory feels about as effective as moving clouds by yelling at them.

    • It was definitely a big problem because if some of the kids have them, the ones that don't are excluded. In the UK there are setups where groups of parents agree to block smartphones together. That seems to work because the kids have peers who a) are just as restricted as them and b) are available under other means of contact because they aren't using their smartphones all the time. In some places it seems that whole schools start working in the same way. In that case this can actually make a difference.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        It was definitely a big problem because if some of the kids have them, the ones that don't are excluded.

        This was a huge issue for my oldest in middle school. She was in a very small minority that did not have a phone. It was made worse by the fact that we don't have a landline, so if friends wanted to call her, they were calling either my wife or my phone (and the kids calling were not a huge fan of that, so they didn't call much). In addition to the social aspects, it caused a few issues with extracurriculars where one of us wasn't present and things like pickup times were fuzzy rather than fixed.

        We stuck

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by RobinH ( 124750 )
          We had a similar experience, but stuck to our guns and didn't let our kids have a smartphone until high school. It worked out. It just means some minor inconveniences. It's also worth pushing back on the sports organizers, and let them know that their assumptions about all kids having a cell phone is incorrect, and that they need to accommodate families like yours. Also, we've had a VoIP landline for almost 20 years. The VoIP services are pretty cheap, and it gives us the peace of mind that there's an

  • Lines up with recommendations by Jonathan Haidt (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:08AM (#65507328) Homepage

    This lines up with recommendations by Jonathan Haidt in the US, where he basically says don't give kids cell phones (or social media) until high school, and even then it's not great. I know that we followed this advice. Our kids said that many of their peers already had phones or devices at school in grades 7 and 8. They also, alarmingly, said many of their peers had already watched Deadpool at this age, which I found astounding. I think it's OK to let kids be kids.

    We also have rules about keeping the phones at the charging area at night (so they don't have them in their bedrooms when it's time to sleep).

    We definitely feel like we could easily be more strict, but our kids' friends seem to think we're some of the strictest parents. Though our kids generally tell us that's a good thing, and they think their peers are making a lot of bad decisions.

    Honestly, as a parent, I feel like there's a lot of stuff being pushed on our kids that we don't really agree with, but has become a societal norm, and we just have to help them navigate.

    I mentor a high school team, so I end up being around lots of high school students. It's very common for them to have a conversation where everyone tries to outdo each other with their mental health labels (ADHD, anxiety, OCD, ASD, neurodiverse, etc.). I asked another mentor, who graduated around 2014, if this was normal when he went to school, and he said "absolutely not", so this seems like a relatively recent phenomenon. I suspect it lines up with the social media and twitter or tiktok influencer videos. These ideas are clearly coming from somewhere. I'm pretty sure that cell phones are mental health petri dishes. In some ways it's good because mental health is no longer a stigma, but I don't think we should be basing our identities on our self-diagnoses.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Apparently it's leading to a renaissance in landlines. Kids will need to communicate, but they don't need a smartphone. So some parents simply get them a landline so they can make phone calls to their friends.

      This works for younger kids to keep in touch, but who don't wander too far away from parents, so likely adolescents in elementary school. Instead of a smartphone, they get a landline.

      Older kids like teens get old school flip or feature phones. This lets them talk to their friends, make and receive call

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

        Then the kid uses the landline to reach dial-up BBSes and now you have TWO problems. ;)

  • Smartphones have the functions of so many other gadgets these days.
    (Apart from the phone and texting)
    Presumably they would have to get the kid a scientific calculator, and some sort of GPS for navigation. And a kindle so they can read books, a MP3 players...

    • Re:What do they suggest as a replacement? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:19AM (#65507350) Homepage

      First of all, my kids have an alarm clock, so they don't need the alarm on their phone. Alarm clocks are cheap. Secondly, our school requires us to provide a scientific calculator for math class, and you can't bring a phone into the exams, and a basic scientific calculator is really cheap (and the school has some loaners as well). Third, we're only talking about the age of 14, so they don't need a GPS. It's all walking or biking distance.

      Need I remind everyone that just a few years ago kids were getting along just fine without smartphones and social media, and according to evidence and data they were actually doing better emotionally and physically. We had walkmans then, or MP3 players later. They still exist, and honestly they're not really needed.

      The biggest gripe I have is that teachers themselves almost exclusively use Google Classroom to assign work, and a lot of kids just use their phones to do their assignments. If teachers want to avoid kids having devices, they need to stop making devices a requirement to hand in schoolwork, at least before high school.

    • Why does a student need GPS, does the school keep moving? Even if it does all they need is to find the local school bus stop - buses are still a thing even though we waste SUV sized tanks of gas so each student can be chauffeured twice a day by their parents.

      Isn't the 'approved' no-memory scientific calculator still a thing since phones can be used for cheating?

      Are students today really expected to read a book using a phone? wtf. my. eyes.

      -Jack of all trades, master of none; meet the smartphone; so

    • When I went to school I:
      - Did not have a smartphone
      - Had a scientific calculator
      - Did not have a GPS. My parents actually didn't pick me up from school. I walked home, others cycled home. I was perfectly able to make it without any "smart" tools.
      - Did not have a MP3 player or walkman - I didn't need to be distracted from my own thoughts. As a result I had some actual friends.

      Kids these days are all addicted to their smartphone and being connected 24/7. This is a bad thing. A really bad thing.

      Parents don't r

    • Smartphones have the functions of so many other gadgets these days. (Apart from the phone and texting) Presumably they would have to get the kid a scientific calculator, and some sort of GPS for navigation. And a kindle so they can read books, a MP3 players...

      Recall the original iPhone? Built-in factory apps only. No 3rd party app downloads. Add Parental and School Controls. Maybe allow some school supplied apps, similar to Corporate iPhone app distribution channels. It can flip into a more restricted mode when it recognizes its on school grounds. Perhaps teachers can turn on a test mode where all apps close and only the calculator can be launched. A school browser white list, a parent defined white list. Etc.

      Call it an ePhone, 'e' for Education.

  • its the additive apps (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:21AM (#65507358)

    > concerns that some children spend up to eight hours daily on devices, with students reportedly online at 2, 3, and 4 in the morning

    That is because all of the apps are designed to maximize engagement, plus kids are easy to influence. The predatory software is the issue.

  • They become MacGyvers (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )

    My son turned into MacGyver when we took his phone away after abusing the privilege. He somehow hacked into the neighbor's wifi using cheap used Androids (neighbors probably left factory passwords in). Androids with cracked-but-working screens can be obtained for about $12 on Ebay. He learned to ignore the cracks.

    My wife and I worked so couldn't micromanage him during the day, giving him all day to plot around our plans. He reminded me of the prisoners in The Great Escape. The school tried to blame us and t

  • The teachers are tired of getting videos taken of them

  • Both Google Family Link and Apple's equivalent allow you to drop any apps you want, including social media apps. So if you want a barebones phone, it's quite easy to achieve - and as a bonus, you can incrementally allow more stuff as kids grow.

  • Teachers and schools need to set rules for school. If the rule at schol is "no phones" as a parent, I will support them. Outside of school is not their business.

  • Phone !== Social media.

    Restrict anti-social media.

  • 1st - really again? same bs about TV 2nd - then give us options. After school programs? (paid is fine) but yea - fix the family dynamic and talk to me after. After school anything = money. Want a paret to spend more time - then don't work them to death so when they get home they cannot do anything but rest. Maybe even let a single parent earn enough to have a family.

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