Schools: Mobile Phones

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, and to warmly welcome her here. Five years ago, the noble Baroness was anticipating retirement, after an immensely distinguished career as a paediatrician, specialising in autism, and having served as president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. She was looking forward to learning the saxophone. Instead, she agreed to chair the Cass review, taking immense care to study all the evidence and taking nearly four years to complete it.

Informed by meetings with more than 1,000 people, seven new evidence reviews and a survey of 15 gender clinics across Europe, she achieved what many thought was impossible, to bring about something close to a consensus on one of the more difficult issues of our time: how best to care for children who are gender questioning or gender distressed. She did so with calm, compassionate and evidence-based writing and reasoning in the publication of the most comprehensive review ever undertaken into youth gender care.

This willingness to follow the evidence and not to follow the herd, is what makes the noble Baroness such a welcome addition to our Chamber. She is just what we need. As we come to grapple with issues such as assisted dying, her experience with disability and palliative care in children’s medicine will be invaluable—no time for that saxophone, I am afraid. We look forward to her contributions to our debate.

It is also a tradition to thank the noble Baroness for moving today’s debate, but I do so with genuine enthusiastic gratitude. Childhood has changed beyond imagination, and not for the better, from the change in children’s food intake, now an average 80% ultra-processed diet, the teaching of contested ideology in schools as fact, lack of traditional play to aid development and, worst of all, the addictive nature of smartphones. We should all be focusing on what we can do to protect the next generation from the repercussions of constant unrestricted access to the internet.

Almost daily, new reports indicate that banning smartphones in schools leads to beneficial impacts on educational attainment, social skills, student behaviour and educational inequality. Stopping their use in schools goes a long way to aiding the development of children. It is increasingly clear that smartphones stifle the cognitive skills vital for academic success. A study involving 150,000 students across 16 countries has demonstrated that the proliferation of smartphone usage in the classroom has significantly damaged the process of learning and academic achievement.

The recent Policy Exchange report mentioned by other noble Lords found that children in schools that have an effective ban on smartphones achieve GCSE results one to two grades higher than those that do not. It also found that only around 11 % of secondary schools have an effective smartphone ban, although those numbers are rapidly increasing as more and more schools recognise the dangers and harms. It found direct correlations to other positive outcomes, including noticeable reductions in bullying and an increase in amounts of healthy physical activity by pupils. A legal ban on smartphones for schools across the UK would provide protection for teachers when parents push back, although most parents I speak to are worried sick about the impact that constant access to phones is having on their children and would welcome such a ban.

The unions are increasingly concerned, too. In response to the NASUWT “Big Question” survey, asking what pupil behaviour problems cause the most concern on a day-to-day basis, the percentage of teachers who think distraction of mobile phones is a major issue has risen from 20% just four years ago to 32% today. They comment that

“social media has encouraged poor behaviours and has been the catalyst for poor behaviour in general. Social media is affecting how students form relationships. Students use phones and social media almost constantly. They are unaware of the world, each other, anything”.

That comes from one of our leading teaching unions.

Now, as a mother of two, thankfully born and raised in a world before smartphones, I of course recognise the value that smartphones can bring to a child’s security—but while they are in school, they are secure. Relentless consumption of internet content provides a threat not only to learning but to mental health. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation and an expert social psychologist, cites

“social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction”

as the symptoms of smartphone overusage by young people. Only last week, health professionals were here in Parliament giving powerful evidence about the damage caused to developmental issues, including language and communication, as well as physical changes in the brain and to eyesight, leading to eating disorders, obesity and musculoskeletal changes as well as issues with sleep.

It is worth looking at evidence of children themselves. After the John Wallis Academy imposed a complete ban on smartphones, a set of year 7 pupils were asked as part of a survey how they felt about the ban. Only 11 % wished they had more access to their devices, while 52% of pupils felt that the policy had an extremely positive impact, citing more human interactions, better concentration and increased learning. The evidence is clear: without regulation, our children face a dystopian future. I urge the Minister and her colleagues to act without delay.