A confession. As a parent, I fail every day.
Not in every regard but in one important way. How, and how much, our teenagers use their mobile phones.
Travelling long distance together last week for half-term it was more obvious than ever; the pull of these devices is very powerful.
The issue has had even more publicity than usual in recent weeks since the murder of Brianna Ghey. Her mother is leading calls for under-16’s to no longer be allowed access to a smart phone.
The push has attracted a lot of support and ‘Stick to Bricks’ (as in the old Nokia phone which can just about make calls and send a text) is one of the campaign groups getting noticed.
Personally, I think the genie is out the bottle and it would be a brave Government that goes down this road but perhaps it should?
I don’t believe there are many upsides to smartphones and in particular social media for our children. I suspect our kids know in their heart they are addicted to the endless scroll of Tik Tok or Instagram.
Aside from the often pointless content, maybe the rapid-fire nature of the material does rewire a young brain to struggle with concentration on anything for very long?
Think about it; have you had a conversation lately with a young person about reading - really reading - a book and not got very far? Maybe, just maybe, that’s because a novel requires patience to see a plot develop that can’t be swiped to the next dopamine hit?
Truth is we know little for sure of the long-term consequences. Not unlike vaping (where we are acting) perhaps, it’s everywhere and we just don’t know the sting in the tail.
As the chair of the Health Committee, I am always talking about prevention of ill health. Well, some £100million has been spent by the Government in the past two years on the soaring mental health needs of school pupils.
Yet more than a million children each year are referred to CAMHS. Prevention is, after all, better than cure so I do wonder if it’s time to be radical.
On a related note, just this week the Education Secretary delivered on her promise to ‘ban mobile phones in schools’.
In practice this simply means new guidance for headteachers.
The moment of truth, locally, comes when we seek to understand whether any of this is different to what our schools are already doing.
Speaking to headteachers it’s clear they already ‘ban’ phones if that means they must stay switched off in their bags during the school day.
Does this happen? For some, yes, but for many, of course not. Teachers, every bit as much as parents, are on the frontline here.
I understand the three Winchester heads - Kings, Westgate and Henry Beaufort - have recently asked parent views on how they would like to move forward.
The results - which will be fascinating - are currently being analysed with the hope to create a unified position across all three secondary schools. This is eminently sensible to my mind.
Many say schools should be more literal in the ‘ban’ but children, some who travel not insignificant distances each day to Henry B or Perins for-instance, should not in my opinion be without any means to contact their parents.
Truth is; there’s always a limit to what the state - locally or nationally - can do.
School years are some of the most precious and they pass in a moment. Children, with the support of us all because they are not adults, need to put down their phones, look up, and enjoy them.
