On 10 September 2024, Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, announced plans to trial age-verification technology, aiming for a yet-to-be-decided minimum age of between 14 to 16 years for young people to open social media accounts. The idea was “to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts.” Around the same time, Ormiston Academies Trust, a British not-for-profit organisation that runs 42 academies, introduced a ban on smartphones during school hours at its 32 secondary schools. Not to be outdone, Eton College banned smartphones for its newest cohort of 13-year-old Year 9 boarders, issuing them with a Nokia ‘dumb phone’ instead- confined to making calls and sending texts. These are but a few of many recent instances of a growing number of planned or intended smartphone bans in schools in Europe, North America, East Asia, Australasia, and elsewhere.
It can be hard to visualise that the first social media platform dates back to 1997 and that the smartphone debuted in 2007 as the Apple iPhone, becoming widely available from 2011 onwards. Smartphone users are now to be found all around around the globe, with children and young people well represented among the ranks of users. Earlier this year, in keeping with wider Western trends, the British online safety regulator Ofcom noted that nine out of ten children in the UK own a smartphone by the age of 11, including a quarter of five- to seven-year olds.
The benefits of instant and constant digital connectivity must be balanced against any potential harms of exposure to an unregulated cyberspace. Few would deny the valuable role of smartphones in enabling Internet browsing for information and news; communicating with family, friends, and work colleagues (phone calls, video calls, email, text messaging, multimedia messaging); entertainment (video games; streaming music, TV shows, cartoons, and movies); and enabling financial transactions (online shopping for goods and services; purchase of tickets for events and journeys). Smartphones can also be used to take photos and videos and to then share them on social media. Many of these uses are relevant to both younger people as well as adults, and particularly benefit the former by allowing social connection, facilitating learning through access to educational resources such as apps, games, and E-books, and enabling creativity. GPS navigation allows parents to keep track of their children, in addition to identifying location and providing directions while walking, cycling, or driving.
Unrestricted access to social media apps is a particular concern with children’s use of smartphones, despite recommendations for their use to be limited to those aged 13 years and above. A preoccupation with social media networking hinders face-to-face social interactivity, which is facilitated by nonverbal cues such as body language, facial expression, and tone of voice. Some addicts may prefer to use their smartphones even in the presence of other people. Interpersonal skills are consequently impaired, and it can become difficult to develop empathy for other people. Then there are the risks of physical inactivity from a sedentary lifestyle; sleep deprivation; screen addiction, with a constant fear of missing out on (FOMO) events and experiences; cyberbullying; exposure to violent, pornographic, and other unsuitable content; and grooming. The negative impact of online bullying on children’s mental health has become a major public health issue. Cyberbullies often operate anonymously, propagating hostile text messages and malicious rumours, and sharing compromising photos, such as in ‘revenge porn’. Teenage girls, in particular, can become obsessed with their physical appearance, which feeds into a wider cyber-audience for sexualised images-to be validated by large numbers of “likes”. Unrealistic expectations can precipitate a range of mental health problems, such as low self-esteem, loneliness, anxiety, depression, perceived stress, eating disorders, and self-cutting. The concern with self-image can become overwhelming and even lead to suicidal thoughts and attempts in extreme cases.
Smartphone use by children is ideally a shared responsibility. Parents have a role to play, by setting consistent screen time limits, imposing nighttime phone curfews, employing broadband content filters, and setting a password on app stores. The moderation of online content remains a tech company responsibility, but their algorithms unfortunately cannot be relied upon to reliably censor undesirable posts. Alternative activities must be also encouraged to help take young minds off their smartphones. Inconsistences in digital parenting remain the norm, as some parents may take a hands-off approach, others resort to strict supervision of online activity or ban smartphones altogether, and yet others only take a passing interest in the internet journeys of their children.
There are undoubted benefits to owning a smartphone. Digital literacy is essential in today’s world, and Millennials and Gen Z people have mostly become adept in this area. But there seems little need to use a smartphone during school hours. There is indeed some evidence to suggest that educational attainment and outcomes, such as GCSE results, are better at schools where smartphones are banned. In these institutions, mobile devices are stored in lockers or magnetically sealed bags, such as Yondr pouches, or banned from the site altogether. The focus is on learning as distractions are minimised, pupils are more engaged in the classroom, and student wellbeing is thereby improved. As research into the effects of social media interactions and smartphone addiction on young minds continues, and policies emerge, there seems little justification to continue to allow smartphone use in the school, whether in the classroom or during lunch breaks. Restricted and supervised use of smartphones, outside of schools, rather than a total ban, seems appropriate for the time being.
Ashis Banerjee