Rethinking Smartphones: Supporting Our Children in a Digital Age

Dear Somerset community

The Weekend Australian Magazine recently wrote an article about what many are calling the greatest social experiment, in providing smartphones to children. The article entitled The kids are not alright has taken a broad look at phone use by this generation of children, both at home and school.

There was nothing new or earth-shattering in the report. We know the overwhelming dangers of social media and the impact it is having on the social and emotional wellbeing of our children. So many issues we deal with both at home and school are linked to online activity, that extend from bullying on one extreme, to sexting and other inappropriate interactions on the other.

We also know the incredible amount of time our children are spending at home and sometimes at school, on these devices. Psychologically, the platforms are designed to keep you scrolling or checking in. We know that schools are trying to ban or heavily minimise phones, but continue to struggle with this. We know the government is implementing changes that they hope will increase the age at which children can access some of the platforms, although, I’m sure many will manage to work their way around this. But we also know there is now a growing number of parents who are actively working together to try and withhold smartphones from our children until they are much older.

I appreciate the push to ban phones in schools or at various events and outdoor experiences, which makes it easier for us to teach and engage, but sadly, all this does is push the interactions back into the home, making it even harder for parents to navigate. My wife Elizabeth and I have journeyed through this, and with four young adult children, it was often incredibly hard to take a stand and have very clear rules around time and place for use within our home, as well as teaching the value of face-to-face communication and discernment. These challenges are probably even harder for parents now, a decade on, and phone addiction is still lethal for the teenage brain.

I have spent many years watching and reflecting on this and wondering what the solution might be and I’ve come to the hard conclusion that the best solution may be to acknowledge the undeniable damage these devices are doing to our young people and continue to advocate for a reprioritisation of the age at which we provide a smart phone to our children; but also to reflect on our own use. To clarify, I think the old fashioned Nokia style phone, that allows you to ring or text is still a great tool and one I support for teenagers. When we are running late, or a training session is cancelled, a quick text is great. The danger is the smartphone that provides unlimited and unchecked access.

So, I think schools have begun to embrace their challenge in endeavouring to minimise the impact a phone has during the school day, but the next step is for our community to embrace a similar stance. For many senior school parents, the horse has already bolted, and I simply want to encourage you to stay strong on keeping boundaries around the home and the amount of time students have access to their devices.

For those in the junior school, I do want to acknowledge the work a number of our parents are doing in this space, encouraging a much later access to a smartphone, and I understand they will be holding events to further support families. In addition, we have booked Wait Mate for our conversation evening in Term 4. In the coming weeks, our aim is to bring a lot of these resources and opportunities together on Schoolbox as a place to support parents, and we will continue to talk about this in the weeks ahead.

As some of you may know, when we work together collaboratively, we can achieve so much more, and this is a great example of this.

Best wishes

Chris Ivey
Headmaster