Ban phones
Or how classrooms should be free from handsets forever
My good pal and former colleague Matt from What We Lost recently wrote a piece about an EU policy he’d like to see enshrined. His take? The governing body should submit Big Tech to a full-on war. A sensible measure for a sensible future.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because Matt’s article was inspired by an old editor of ours, the veritable Alejandro Tauber, publisher of EUobserver. With this in mind, I thought it was about time to fling my own hat into this crowded and somewhat incestuous ring.
So here’s my proposal for a tasty bit of EU regulation: ban phones in schools. Carefully collect them all, place the devices into a gigantic burlap sack, and fling them into the nearest river.
Sadly for the sake of The Rectangle, this view alone isn’t particularly controversial or eye-catching. In fact, many countries around the world are getting onboard with it. For example, about a week ago South Korea announced a ban of phones in schools, while, in June, the Netherlands declared classrooms should be free of the devices. These aren’t isolated events — plenty more nations are following suit.
This isn’t enough though. Phones being banned in schools should spread across the EU and, if possible, beyond. The evidence is simply too compelling.
Take me for example, your old pal, Callum. I’ve written extensively about my mobile addiction, something that’s impacted me deeply, despite only getting a smartphone when I was approaching 20. If it’s mushing up my mind, it must be doing worse to kids.
You’ll be sorta glad to hear the data backs this up. Phones, scientists and various other brainboxes have found, are incredibly bad for kids There’s this research, that finds a correlation between frequent use of mobile devices and behavioural problems in children; this study that suggests a negative link between use of phones and young people’s quality of life; and, finally, this paper showing how heavy phone use can negatively impact academic performance.
These studies are merely the poop-stained tip of the shitty iceberg though — there’s a ship-sinking, ocean-filling amount of evidence showing how harmful handsets can be. So much, in fact, that the only reason to be against banning phones in schools is if you really, really, really hate children.
But here’s where the wrinkle arrives: banning handsets in classrooms alone isn’t enough. In a similar vein to the Online Safety Act, solving this problem is deeper than enacted a straight removal. South Korea and other countries banning phones won’t be effective by itself, instead we need to remodel the relationship young people have with their device.
Let’s think about that in a different way.
Restricting something without explanation or logic achieves little to nothing if you don’t tackle the root of the problem. Sure, if mobiles are banned in schools, kids may not obsessively use their phones in the classroom, but any positive benefits of this will be shredded when they leave the premises and go back to their handsets again.
So how do we go about dealing with this? Easy peasy: look at teenage pregnancies.
A few decades ago in the UK, teenage pregnancy was a huge issue. Instances peaked in the late 1990s, but, these days, it’s far rarer.
As a government report states, “The conception rate for young women aged 15 to 17 has fallen by 60% since 1998 with a similar reduction in conceptions to under-16s. Both are at lowest level since record-keeping began in the late 1960s.”
A key part of this success is down to education. A combination of teaching young people about safe sex, providing access to contraception, and communicating the negative lifelong impact young pregnancy can have on people sent the numbers teenage pregnancies spiralling downward. It’s been a true success story in changing the behaviour of young people.
What makes this even more impactful is how the opposite has happened in parts of the US.
While education in the UK led to fewer teenage pregnancies, areas of the United States where abstinence was encouraged and young people were kept broadly ignorant, teenage pregnancies rose.
This reveals something important about encouraging behavioural change.
The success of reducing teenage pregnancies in the UK shows that you can’t just declare something’s bad and expect young people to go, “yeah, that makes sense, it is bad, I’m now going to change all my behaviour because, you, adult, told me so, thank you so much for showing me the error of my immature ways, while I’m here, should I mow your lawn for free too?” Instead, behavioural change comes from treating people respectfully and giving them the appropriate information to make an informed decision themselves.
This is how we deal with mobiles in the classroom.
Banning phones in schools is a broadly good thing — especially as the mere presence of the devices has shown to reduce attention — but if the core goal of these initiatives (AKA stopping childhood phone addiction) is to be achieved, policy makers need to move beyond simple prohibition. After all, removing something and expecting young people to innately understand why won’t usher in long-term change — and that’s what’s needed.
Kids need to know that consumer tech companies aren’t their friends. In many cases, they’re the opposite. Whether it’s social media or computing devices, these things are designed to capture and ensare our attention. We’re all being manipulated, and it’s such an open secret that some technology executives don’t let their own children use handhelds.
We need to trust young people with this information and give them the tools to fight against it.
So, there we go. That’s my thesis for a new EU set of regulations: ban phones in schools, but explain why.
Written down like that, it doesn’t sound too impressive, but not every good idea needs to be complex. Sometimes they just need to be good.