Mobile phones should be banned in schools to help pupils concentrate on learning, the schools minister has said.
Nick Gibb is concerned that too many children are using mobile phones at night and arriving at school the next day tired. He said that the government would introduce lessons for pupils on how to limit their screen time.
Evidence of the negative effect of phone use on children’s development and mental health is mounting. Guidance being drawn up by the Department for Education will require pupils to be taught about the dangers of excessive use. Teachers will also have to explain the benefits of imposing limits on screen time outside school hours and of not taking mobiles to bed at night.
Mr Gibb told The Times: “I believe very strongly that children should be limiting their own use at home. Every hour spent online and on a smartphone is an hour less talking to family, and it’s an hour less exercise and it’s an hour less sleep. And of course it is a lack of sleep that research is showing can have a damaging effect on a child’s mental health.”
He said that head teachers should set the tone by banning use of the devices in schools. “Schools obviously are free to set their own behaviour policies but my own view is that schools should ban mobile telephones and smartphones inside school, and particularly inside classrooms.”
Mr Gibb acknowledged the “huge benefits” of the internet but said that children needed to be taught about its dangers to minimise the chances of cyberbullying and online harassment.
Almost all schools are thought to have some controls over mobile phone use. Some ban them outright and others restrict their use in lessons or during playtime. A 2015 study by the London School of Economics found that banning them resulted in test scores rising by more than 6 per cent.
Lessons to curb mobile phone use will form part of an overhaul of personal, social, health and economic education. The curriculum has not been updated since 2000, before the advent of gay marriage, social media and on-demand television.
Primary school pupils will be expected to know that some people pretend to be someone they are not online, as well as how to report harmful content. Secondary school pupils will be warned about the dangers of pornography and of sharing compromising photographs or information.
Schools will be told to be aware that for many young people “the distinction between the online world and other aspects of life is less marked than for some adults”.
The changes will become compulsory from September 2020, although schools will be encouraged to adopt the lessons from this autumn.
However, the National Association National Association of Head Teachers warned that a ban on phones would “cause more problems than it solves”. A spokeswoman said that it could “drive phone use underground, making problems less visible and obvious for schools to tackle.
“Ultimately, schools work to prepare young people for the outside world, giving them the awareness and strategies to responsibly monitor their own screen use and the ability to identify and deal with any negative impacts or problematic content they encounter.”
There is growing concern about the amount of time children spend online and the effect it has on their family life, health and education.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health advised last month that children should not look at screens within an hour of going to bed, and recommended that parents set a good example.
A separate study of data from 11,000 children found that teenagers who spent long hours on social media were twice as likely to show symptoms of depression, with girls affected more.
Children aged 12 to 15 spend an average of more than 20 hours online a week, and 17 hours using a mobile, according to a recent study by Ofcom. Two thirds of those aged 5 to 15 use a mobile at home. Some told the media regulator that going out to meet friends face to face was “too much effort” and they preferred to watch YouTube videos and other online content at home.
Social media companies have come under pressure to act to protect young users after the death of Molly Russell, 14, in 2017. Her family later discovered that she had been shown material on social media linked to anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide.
It has also been announced that official guidelines for parents on how much time their children should spend in front of screens will be issued for the first time. Children should take a break from video games, TV, tablets and mobile phones at least every two hours and avoid social media before bedtime, according to advice from Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer.
The guidelines, which have yet to be finalised, will also recommend that children take exercise breaks. According to the Daily Mail, Dame Sally is expected to link social media use to mental health problems and call for more research. Her findings will be formally announced on Thursday.
Behind the story
Here is a sample of recent statements on screens and children: mobile phones stunt toddler development, phones have no effect on toddlers; social media causes teenage depression, social media keeps them sociable; screen time affects sleep quality, screen time has negligible effects. You could be forgiven for being confused (Tom Whipple writes).
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health recently produced perhaps the most authoritative assessment. The claim that screen time is directly damaging has, it said, essentially no evidence. There was better support for the claim of indirect harm: if you are on your phone then you are, after all, not out exercising, socialising or sleeping.
Studying the long-term effects of mobile phones is hard. It is impossible to separate cause and correlation. “Screen time” can mean editing pages on Wikipedia about the Schleswig Holstein question or bullying people on Snapchat. And the technology is new: we haven’t seen the long-term effects.
Ultimately this may not be an issue that science can resolve. It may be that the best judges of the nuances are the parents and teachers who know the children best.
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