Our View: Unesco’s advice on mobiles in schools should be enough to act

The statement of the Child Commissioner to the House education committee during a debate on banning mobile phones in schools could not have failed to raise eyebrows among most parents and probably a lot of teachers.

The issue has been put on ice in any case because no one at the committee could agree.

It’s not that the commissioner opposes some limitations but she thinks an all-out prohibition, including breaks, would result in the opposite of what is intended by the cabinet proposal.

What was odd is what seems to be a one-sided view as to the virtues of smartphones without acknowledging the hundreds of studies that have revealed the psychological and social damage being done to children by constant screen time.

According to the commissioner, they offer “incredible possibilities to children and establish new ways of communication, learning, information and interaction” and they “teach children to develop and use critical thinking”. They also develop the concepts of creativity and socialisation, she said.

It all sounds fine and dandy if the studies had not already shown the opposite – less critical thinking and less socialisation among younger users.

How critical thinking can be developed by finding a ready-made answer on Google is a mystery and a situation is developing now where students will not need to think at all with the advent of AI to do it for them.

Unesco, a UN agency, found that “even being close to a smartphone” has been linked with students being distracted in the classroom.  Large-scale international assessment data from 14 countries suggest a negative link between excessive use and negative student performance, it said.

As a result, Unesco has recommended a global ban in the classroom. Shouldn’t that be good enough for us?

In light of the evidence, the commissioner’s stance is puzzling. Children are only is school five or six hours a day and still have plenty of screen time ahead of them before bed.

She says we should trust teenagers to “regulate themselves” while citing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which “recognises that depending on the child’s age, degree of maturity and developing capacities, they should be granted the right to self-determination, autonomy and the right to make decisions for themselves”.

So we should no longer pull out all the stops to prevent minors from drinking, smoking, gambling, underage sex and drugs then?

If the commissioner had listened to the representative of the teachers’ union at the House, she could not have failed to hear him relate how students set up fights in the yard in order to film and post videos on the internet.

He also referred to a student in an exam who was seen with his cell phone at his feet copying physics formulas because “he didn’t have time” to learn them. It would probably be fair to say these were not isolated incidents.

If the excuse for phones in schools is so that children can stay in touch with parents, the solution would seem to be to give them a flip phone.