Teacher Who cares if ministers' proposals on smartphones are a stunt? Kids need this

The fight for the mental health of the next generation has begun.

Our education and health ministers have fired the first shots in what will likely be a hard-fought battle to turn the tide on the negative impacts of the online world on our children’s physical, social, personal and sexual development.

What they need now is an army of parents, grandparents, guardians, caregivers and educators to bolster their resolve. If you’d like to be part of a positive, empowering and child-centred change in Irish society, please read on! 

What has been proposed?   

In short, if the proposals are implemented, smartphones would be banned in secondary schools throughout the country and, until social media companies take responsibility for protecting children from the harm that their products currently cause, under 16- year-olds would not be allowed access their services.  

Why are they doing this?    

Minister for Education Norma Foley’s proposal is supported by the growing research that shows that the removal of smartphones during school time leads to better academic performance, higher levels of attention during class, better recall of class content, higher rates of mindfulness and lower feelings of anxiety related to school.  

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly’s proposal, outlined in an interview with The Sunday Times, is based on the understanding that the correlation over the last 15 years between social media use by children and the increasing mental health crises they face is enough to warrant putting restrictions in place.

The mental health authorities in France, Spain, South Korea, Germany, Australia, the UK and the US have all called for similar measures. The US Surgeon General, Dr Vivek H Murthy has warned that “adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms”. 

Is social media really that bad for children?    

We know that children seamlessly live between the physical and the virtual world in a way that no other generation before them has, benefitting from online information, education, communication, social interaction and entertainment. For minority groups of young people in particular, access to online communities, forums and information can provide much needed support and guidance, and a sense of acceptance and belonging that they may not be able to secure in their physical local community. 

But we also know that due to the total lack of online regulation, Irish children are regularly exposed to extremely violent, often pornographic and increasingly dangerous content, from beheadings to gang rape. Social-comparison-based content exacerbates their social anxieties and encourages misogyny and disordered eating, as well as facilitating unregulated predatory environments and exploitative online interactions.

Minority groups who are searching for acceptance and belonging online are also those most at risk of being harmed in their online interactions.

School systems and governments have struggled and often failed to manage the fall out.  

The other thing we all know about social media is its ‘addictive’ dopamine-mechanism-engaging nature: as adults we grapple with it every day. Until children are mature enough and skilled enough to manage their engagement with it in a healthy way, they need to be protected from it like we do with every other addictive substance or scenario. 

Would the proposals work?   

They’re a big step in the right direction.

Norma Foley’s secondary school smartphone ban is a well-founded, well-intentioned move to bolster the efforts already being undertaken in most schools to do what they can to lessen the negative impact of smartphones on the lives of their students during school hours.

However, if rolled out without the informed and educated participation of the students involved, measures like these are likely to be seen as just another rule to be evaded.

It’s crucial that students are facilitated to take ownership of this strategy, understanding it as a supportive step that serves their best interests. This helps to avoid the need for additional teacher-policing of students, which won’t result in any real protection for young people from the risks, harms, and addictive nature of the completely unregulated world of social media and the broader virtual experiences children encounter online. 

The legislative approach Stephen Donnelly outlines would go a long way in protecting children from the crimes that are perpetrated against them every day in the virtual world, crimes that are legislated for in the physical world but go totally unchecked online because of the loophole that ensures online platforms are not held responsible for the activities that occur on them.

It would give the education system time to help students develop the critical digital media literacy skills they need to navigate the online world safely and successfully.

Most importantly, it would put the onus on the online service providers and social media companies to create safe online spaces for children by default. 

Are there any risks or downsides to the proposals?   

The major risk with all of these initial proposals by government is that instead of protecting children in the virtual world, we attempt to prohibit them from engaging with it entirely.

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Although we can be universally welcoming of the government finally taking a stand on this issue, we need to ensure that all government measures intended to protect children are built upon a child-centred, children’s-rights-based approach that does not prohibit their essential participation online but instead ensures their safety as they learn how to become responsible citizens of the virtual universe.

Isn’t this just a political stunt in the lead up to an election?

Within hours of Foley and Donnelly going public with their proposals, radio commentators and talk show panellists were quick to criticise what they dismissed as unrealistic, impractical, electoral stunts being staged by these politicians.  

Of course they are political stunts! Who cares? We should grab them with both hands and consistently and continuously lobby the relevant politicians until the proposed policy changes are effectively implemented.

These proposals might just lead to the preventative measures we’ve been waiting for to start addressing the youth mental health crisis in our country, the dramatic increase in sexual violence experienced and perpetrated by minors in Ireland and the trends of homophobic, misogynistic, racist and xenophobic attitudes we see in our classrooms being cultivated by the algorithms used to target our young people online.

Parents’ role 

Parents have a hugely important role to play in keeping their children safe online but in the face of poorly regulated online corporate conglomerates with more money and power than nation states, it has become virtually impossible to do so.

This currently has parents feeling totally overwhelmed and ill-equipped to even know where to start. The responsibility for addressing this problem can no longer lie solely with parents, schools and young people; it must be placed, through effective legislation, on those responsible for facilitating the harm experienced by children online. 

Right, so what do we need to do?

This is not a simple problem so there is no simple solution. We need a multi-layered, whole-government approach with cross-party support.
 
1. We need robust regulation to ensure the protection of our children online.  
2. We need widespread public information outlining the dire impacts of letting our children roam free in an often damaging, profit-based virtual world that currently does not have their best interests at heart.  
3. We need education to provide critical digital media literacy skills embedded into the very fabric of every aspect of our school system.  
 
If implemented, these measures would transform all smart devices into safe, non-addictive and empowering tools of creativity, communication, education and entertainment; we would not need to ban smartphones or ban anyone from using them.

The solution is not prohibition; it’s the increased accountability of social media giants and online service providers that will result in safe online participation for our children. There’s an election coming. Make sure your voice is heard.

Eoghan Cleary is an assistant principal, English teacher and coordinator of SPHE and curricular wellbeing at Temple Carraig Secondary School in Greystones. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and is the co-author of multiple textbooks for the new Junior Cycle SPHE course.