About 17 years ago, my eldest son got an Xbox for Christmas (other platforms were available), and with the games that you could buy for it, became immersed in worlds beyond out living room. (We were always clear from the start that there would be no TVs or game consoles in bedrooms – yes, we were that mean). He was quickly followed by my second son, whose preference was for a PlayStation and its associated games. They were hooked and quickly bought into worlds such as those that came with Assassin’s Creed, Skyrim, Call of Duty, and so on. All very different games but with the same principles and similar complexity. You became a character and inhabited that world – even if only for a short while.

This poem, then, was my reaction to their ability to do just that – to be in other spaces and places without ever leaving the house. It felt like a sudden change – even though it happened over months, possibly years – from watching TV together in the evenings, particularly at weekends, to this more disparate, detached state, where each finds their own virtual place in this world. A virtual space beyond the one they inhabit in reality. Even my husband could get lost in these games at times – with military campaigns that covered Napoleonic to Star Wars.

This is not something I’ve ever been interested in, and I’m still not, preferring instead my own headspace and nothing in my ears except fresh air. And I don’t think I’m alone. As the poem says, my looking-back lenses might be pinker than they should be, but I think the circle might be turning.

Think about how technology has evolved in the last 20 years. If you want to hear a different (and humorous) take on this, have a listen to Aurie Styla on Radio 4 at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001xvqj  . Here, Aurie takes us on his journey through the progress of technology, offering a human perspective on how the way the world has become less warm and human. He celebrates the march of tech while being appropriately terrified of it. (If this is not available at the time of printing, you can always check out his website to find clips on this).

Now think about how your phone is more like a small computer, capable of taking you anywhere at any time. When was the last time you went for a coffee or a meal and did NOT see people on their phones, rather than talking to each other, while their children watched something on a phone instead of colouring or reading books that they had been given? Or the last time you did NOT see any children being pushed in prams while their parents were on the phone? Or even dogs being walked by their owners busy talking to someone on or scrolling through their phones? At times, it feels like technology is pushing us further away from each other, rather than bringing us together by negating long distances between us. The distances now seem more than geographical too – they feel more cultural miles than physical ones.

All is not lost, however. There may be a counter-revolution starting to take hold, and it might be starting in education. Have a look at the February 2024 guidance published by the government for schools at:  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mobile-phones-in-schools.

Has much changed since then? It’s hard to quantify. We’ve also had a documentary on the effects of removing phones from students in schools, which reached millions. Might this be the tip of the iceberg (despite global warming)? There’s an awful lot of guidance to read, but how much of it is being effectively implemented without backlash from irate parents and guardians?

If you put the words ‘detrimental effects of mobile phone use in schools UK’ into Google Scholar (as of 10 January 25 – remember, other search engines are available) with a time frame of ‘since 2024’, it brings back 17,500 articles on this subject. So, maybe something’s starting to change. Yes, I know it’s more anecdotal than true scientific evidence, but I think it makes the point.

Doesn’t some of this change rest with parents too? “Do as I say, not as I do” possibly needs to change for some. You can’t throw everything into the school curriculum and not expect something to give. It’s pretty full already, and there are only so many hours in the day. It might be time to start pushing some things back to parents. A cultural change isn’t a quick change, but you, arguably (and please use this word throughout this piece), need to start somewhere. Don’t you?

So, we could start the change in education by getting rid of mobile phones (other than for emergency use) during the school day. There was a time when schools stored emergency phone numbers, and students didn’t actually have phones, but calls were still made in times of need. But that was in days of yore…

We even have some (quite a bit, if you look at the results on Google Scholar) unsettling evidence. That ought to make us start thinking more seriously about these things – for the sake of our children. We’ve tried working with this technology, and in some cases, it has worked very well. Mobile phones are, after all, small computers capable of so much more than social media messaging. Even trainee teachers preferred them to alternative ways of locating information (see Hramiak, A. (2012) ‘It’s easier to use my phone’: An exploration of the use of mobile technology with Trainee Teachers. Paper presented at Information Technology in Teacher Education (ITTE) Annual Conference, Oxford University,Oxford, 5–7 July 2012). Indeed, it would be interesting to see if those trainees still have the same opinions as they did then, after years of dealing with mobile phones in their own classrooms. But are the detrimental effects now outweighing the good?

I’m sure there are teachers out there who have tried over the years to teach without disruptions from mobile phones by removing them from students, but without support from further up the hierarchy (and from parents), it’s not that easy to do. I know this because I was once of them. Some twenty-odd years ago – I was ahead of my time – in a further education college, I confiscated students’ mobile phones at the start of lessons and got my staff to do the same. It lasted a day. The then Vice Principal of the college was not ‘amused’, and I was told (in no uncertain terms) that we were not allowed to remove mobile phones, as the parents of our students had complained to the college. This has to be a top-down and bottom-up thing involving parents, teachers, and governance.

It just might be time to push back – even if it’s only one shove at a time.

Postscript:

To those of you out there who think you might have seen the poem before: No, you’re not going mad. A very long time ago, before days of yore even, when I was the editor of the ITTE Newsletter, I included a version of this poem in an edition of the newsletter. There’s a prize for anyone who can locate this rare and valuable edition – I can’t find it anywhere.