There’s a reason Eton is cracking down on smartphones

Eton College has just announced that it will ban new pupils from bringing smartphones to school from September, and will give them a basic, school-issued Nokia handset instead that can only make calls and send texts. Currently Eton does not allow pupils to have phones on them during the day, and all pupils up until Sixth Form must hand in all devices at night. Many other private schools are pursuing similar policies: from September, year seven pupils at Brighton College will not be allowed to have internet-enabled phones on site, and all offline devices will still have to be locked away during the school day. The deputy head at Alleyn’s in Dulwich has written to parents of incoming year sevens urging them to only buy ‘dumbphones’ for their children.

This is not unique to the private sector. Many state schools already have admirable initiatives designed to crackdown on smartphone use. For example, pupils at John Wallis Church of England Academy in Ashford, Kent, have to put their phones in a magnetically sealed fabric pouch kept in their bag, and the magnetic lock is only released at the end of the day. This has had an impressive impact: since introducing the scheme in January, the school has seen a 40 per cent drop in detentions and a 25 per cent reduction in truancy. Wilson’s School, an all-boys’ grammar in Sutton, already bans smartphones for the youngest boys, whilst All Saints Catholic College in Notting Hill has already trialled a 12 hour school day to help break phone addiction, and any phones spotted on school premises are confiscated and locked in a safe for five days.

Unfortunately though, these schools tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Despite the vast majority of schools having some sort of phone ban in place, only 11 per cent of schools in England and Wales actually physically separate students from their phones for the duration of the school day, even though we know the mere presence of a phone is a distraction in and of itself. Lots of schools still allow pupils to use phones at break-time or lunchtime, or turn a surreptitious blind eye to the occasional under the desk phone check because it is easier than having to deal with the backlash from pupils and, all too often, parents.

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It’s also worth noting that there is a difference between introducing a smartphone policy like this in a boarding school like Eton – which is already a highly controlled and supervised environment, where schools are acting in loco parentis – and a day state school where kids only attend for six or seven hours. For the latter, schools can have all the lockboxes they like, but they still have to deal with all the problems and consequences of students having unlimited access to smartphones for the rest of the day: sleep deprivation, poor concentration, cyberbullying, low self-esteem, access to inappropriate content, and the toxic cycle of addiction and anxiety. Unless schools can get parents on board, and stop them buying younger teenagers smartphones altogether, then the relentless dopamine stimulation of digital life still inevitably takes its toll.

There is also a wealth gap here that needs to be acknowledged. Although it seems somewhat counter-intuitive, children from lower socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to own mobile phones at an early age. Their parents are also much less likely to impose screen time-limits on them (which makes sense, given that they will have less access to extra-curricular activities and other clubs, or may be working or single parents, and so less able to monitor phone use). According to Smartphone Free Childhood, the data shows that the harms caused by smartphones therefore affect those in the lowest economic households the most: on average they spend twice as much time a day on screens, and are twice as likely to report being physically threatened online. 

Now is the opportune time for the Department for Education to step up and think about how we can make sure all children and young teenagers are free from the impact of smartphones, not just the most privileged. 

We don’t need yet another consultation or study into the impact of phones – we already have overwhelming evidence that smartphones fundamentally rewire every mental, physical, social and emotional aspect of children’s lives. What we do need is support and guidance to help schools and, more importantly, parents, start this digital detox. For example, what about a national, coordinated campaign encouraging parents to wait until a certain age before buying their children a smartphone, or introducing more stringent age verification measures for social media? There are options out there, but the longer we drag our feet, the greater the risk to our children’s health and happiness.