As parents, we want to keep our children safe. That’s the reason we’ve given our kids a phone. What we haven’t realised, according to one Border principal, is that if we don’t teach our kids the necessary skills and discipline in using a phone correctly, it create issues.
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It’s called smartphone dependence – how strongly we feel we need to have a smartphone in order to get through a typical day. And here’s the rub. Whether the phone is on or off it’s distracting. Especially if it’s within reach, because part of our brains are actively working to not pick up or use the phone.
Assistant Professor Adrian Ward of the McCombs School of Business puts it this way: “It’s not that participants were distracted because they were getting notifications on their phones,” Ward said. “The mere presence of their smartphone was enough to reduce their cognitive capacity.”
On the Border, all secondary schools have mobile phone restrictions in place to manage our children’s dependence on their devices. Some policies have been in place for eight years or more, while others were formulated in the last few months. They are all being constantly evaluated and refined.
“It’s a circular process, where we keep revisiting things and ensuring that we’re skilling the students up, ‘cause that’s what it is, a skill.”
- Janine Haymes - Trinity Anglican College
The Scots School Albury, Trinity Anglican College and the Border Christian College have taken the hard line where no phones are allowed during school hours unless a teacher gives permission in class. Wodonga Senior Secondary College has introduced the rule “not in class and not on person” and for Albury High and Murray High phones are not allowed during lessons but can remain in students’ bags.
It’s worth noting the NSW Government is currently conducting a review into non-educational use of mobile devices in schools. The month-long window for public submissions ended on October 19.
At Trinity Anglican College in Thurgoona, the mobile phone policy is not written. Instead there’s an implicit understanding among students and parents that from “first bell to last bell, phones are not allowed”.
Madhulikaa Sarjapuram, a student at Trinity, was given her first phone at the end of year six and next year, she goes into year 12.
“My friends actually got it earlier than me. I think our grade was very early with the years that they got their mobile phones. I know recently the age to get your first mobile phone is dropping in our generation.”
Maddie, now 15, started at Trinity in year nine. Her old school provided iPads before implementing a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy but it wasn’t advocated or taken seriously so the students were effectively using their iPads as phones during breaks.
The Community and Service Captain accepts that home can be more lenient than school because “we’re not in an education environment” and although Trinity’s policy is more strict, she sees the sense in it.
“In school, there’s definitely rules like don’t have it during class time and don’t have it during the lunch hour and that’s because we’re around people our own age where interaction is very important.
“As soon as the first bell rings, we put our phones in our bags or in our lockers. Some year 12’s keep it on them because in class there’s often a lot of opportunities where we need to take pictures of the board or what we’re doing. After the final bell rings, we’re allowed to take out our phones again after school.”
Acting Head of the Senior School at Trinity, Janine Haymes says by not having “the black mirror” between them, interactions between students are “authentic and stronger”.
“The big thing for me here is at recess and lunch seeing students converse and interact with each other without the screen in between them. At a previous place, I’ve worked at, it was very much a case that students would have their phone out and with them at recess and lunch,” Mrs Haymes says.
Maddie says she and her friends are more free to “do other things and think about other things” without their phones. “Literally we can just talk to each other, instead of go on our phones and message each other. I feel like we need to break that social media obsession and I think banning phones during lunchtime and recess are the baby steps towards overcoming the social media obsession that has our generation engulfed.”
There’s “more of a sense of freedom that they have because they’re away from the pressures of social media, away from those pressures that technology can actually dictate,” Mrs Haymes adds.
Across the river at Wodonga Senior Secondary College (WSSC), assistant principal Matt Moylan is in week 16 of the school’s new mobile phone policy.
“We’ve had, as all schools have had, issues with students using their phones in class and the impact that it’s having. It was basically around new research that has come out around mobile phone use and young people and how it affects their learning. We’re getting more and more information about it all the time as more research projects come online and we just made a call that something had to be done for the benefit of the kids,” Mr Moylan says.
The major change in the WSSC policy is that phones are no longer allowed “on person” during class. The college has installed eSmart boxes in every classroom, the teachers collect the phones at the beginning of each lesson and return the phones at the end of each lesson.
The school took a strategic approach to the mobile phone policy change sending out online surveys prior to and after the new policy was implemented.
“We did pre and post surveys on the kids to find out and the staff, how much they were being used and what they were using it for in class. And once the results of the pre-survey came out, we had to do something.
“The post survey results are mixed in terms of the parents and kids support for the policy - plenty of kids like it, plenty of kids don’t like it for various reasons. But overall, staff see it as a huge positive and the students do also. They see the value - they just don’t like it.”
Kids don’t like handing over their phone
Handing over the phone can cause high levels of anxiety for some students.
“They are so attached to their phone, and some of them are so addicted to their phone that the thought of handing over the phone brings on anxieties. It’s tough for those kids who are addicted to having their phone with them,” Mr Moylan says.
Nicholas Wassink, a Year 12 student at WSSC, admits he was one of those addicts.
“I can honestly say that I was a bit addicted to my phone. It’s really helped me in a way that I’m not always on my phone anymore. I used to be really on my phone and now it’s like since I don’t have my phone, I’ve got nothing really to think about so like the only thing really to do is to work.”
The 17-year-old says the new policy has impacted his classmates, in a good way.
“You notice a lot of people that are usually on their phones are really getting into their schooling and like looking around … having a really focused class is a good environment for learning in too.”
But change is not always straight forward. Trinity hands out after school detentions if a student is found with their phone and at WSSC the student loses the phone for the rest of the day.
“When you’re dealing with young people, boundaries are going to pushed, of course that’s going to happen,” Mrs Haymes concedes. “It is, in some cases a habit that needs to be broken.
“We do encourage students to actually lock them into their locker as opposed to having them on them - because that can be a little too much of a temptation. Think we’ve all been in that situation where you’re waiting in the doctors’ surgery and it’s easier to pull out your phone as opposed to doing anything else,” she adds.
Managing parents’ expectations
Both teachers agree an important part of managing the policy is managing parents’ expectations.
“If you’re feeling upset or you know you’re not feeling well, it’s really easy to pull that phone out and send Mum or Dad a text message whereas we, we really want that to be a process because you know when they’re here, our job is to look after them. We really want it to be a case that we’re the first point of call when they’re here and then we facilitate to best support them,” Mrs Haymes says.
“There’s been an expectation built up that parents are able to contact their students or their kids at any time, day or night. And that’s difficult when the kid is trying to concentrate in class. And in our policy, we’ve got information for parents and what the expectations are for parents, because they’re on their devices all the time and there’s an expectation that their young people are as well which is counterproductive to their education, counterproductive to their abilities to perform well in class,” Mr Moylan says.
“We gave plenty of forewarning about the policy. I know for a fact that there’s parents they aren’t necessarily happy with it but they’re accepting of it and I’m sure there’s parents that are working around the policy and paying no attention to the policy, but we deal with those and work with those parents when it comes up,” he adds.
Is the “not on person” policy in the classroom making a difference to how students relate to each other at recess and lunch?
“I would doubt it,” Matt Moylan says. “The ones who are always playing basketball or playing soccer or whatever they are playing, are still doing it. The ones who are on their phones all recess and lunchtime - they’re still on their phones all recess and lunchtime. I don’t think it’s made any change to what’s happening outside.”
Then there’s the fear of missing out or FOMO which Maddie and Nicholas have experienced when disconnected to their phone but Maddie says it becomes easier through the grades.
“I think when I was younger, especially in year seven and year eight. I would just have my social media there so I don’t have to miss out on it. But now I like to challenge how much FOMO I can deal with and I think a lot of my friends are like that as well. Our grade is having a lot of social media breaks now and I think that ties in with the amount of workload we’ve got. And we don’t see a lot of problem with missing out, because we’ve got a lot of commitments as well,” Maddie says.
For Nicholas, he is still dealing with it. “Sometimes when I miss out and sort of see that on social media it makes me upset, makes me jealous and I’m like ‘Oh why didn’t I go?’ But I sort of know when things come around, ‘Okay I’m not looking at it tonight. I don’t want to see what everyone else is doing’. And to be honest, it sort of gets annoying when a lot of people are doing that, ‘It’s like okay I’ve seen about five concerts on different social medias, I don’t need to see it again.’”
Relationships without the phone
In early 2017, a talk on Millennials began to go viral.
The talk was given by author and organisational consultant Simon Sinek who barely drew breath for 15 minutes. Normally, Australians might find this kind of rhetoric agonising at best, infuriating at worst. But we as a nation stopped, listened and shared.
Sinek talked of the millennial generation’s addiction to mobile phones.
“We have age restrictions on smoking, gambling and alcohol. And we have no age restrictions on social media and cell phones. Which is the equivalent of opening up the liquor cabinet and saying to our teenagers, ‘Hey by the way, this adolescence thing, if it gets you down ...’”
Sinek wasn’t just referring to the millennial generation, he was talking about the device generation – our children.
“You have an entire generation that has access to an addictive numbing chemical called dopamine through social media and cell phones as they’re going through the high stress of adolescence.”
With over 34 million views on Facebook, Simon Sinek’s philosophy has found a universal audience. He says without mobile phones young people start to form relationships.
“The research is undeniable,” Mr Moylan says. “Kids perform better when they don’t have their devices on them, the kids are telling us via surveys that they’re performing better without their phones on them, it’s not just worldwide research, it’s our research.”
Relationships are not formed with our phones states Sinek. They are formed by asking: “‘How’s your Dad – I heard he was in hospital?’ ‘Oh – he’s really good. Thanks for asking.’ ‘Oh, I’m really glad – that’s amazing.’ ‘Yeah I know – it was really scary for a while.’ That’s how you form relationships. ‘Hey, did you get that assignment done?’ ‘No, I didn’t.’ ‘Hey, I’ll help you out.’ ‘Really?’ That’s how trust forms.”
“We do find, that there is an improvement but of course we have to make sure that we revisit it. It’s a circular process, where we keep revisiting things and ensuring that we’re skilling the students up, ‘cause that’s what it is a skill,” Mrs Haymes says.
Sinek is emphatic. “We have to create situations for those little innocuous interactions to happen.”
“The positive feedback from kids who care about their education is overwhelming and the difficulties that we expected to have in terms of students handing over their phones or refusing to hand over their phones hasn’t materialised at a level that we were expecting, we were expecting more backlash from the kids - that hasn’t been the case,” Mr Moylan adds.
The research is undeniable. Kids perform better when they don’t have their devices on them.
- Matt Moylan - Wodonga Senior Secondary College
The no phone policy is making a difference outside the classroom too says Maddie.
“I’m noticing the people in our school much more – their personalities and what they’re thinking without their phone in front of them. ‘Cause obviously on social media the way which we message or the way which we talk is different to how we talk in real life – so I’m noticing the true personality of people.”
And at home.
I’ve realised I don’t have to have it on me to achieve something or to talk to people, or to communicate.
- Maddie - Student at Trinity Anglican College
“Not having the phone during school gives me a break from technology that I always have at home and I’ve realised I don’t have to have it on me to achieve something or to talk to people, or to communicate. With me personally, I’ve found myself away from my phone, even at home. Not going on social media as often … that’s the same with the other seniors of the school because they’re used to that policy now and their slowly incorporating it to their home habits.”
It’s teaching this generation to be in the moment says Simon Sinek. “If you don’t have the phone, you just kind of enjoy the world. And that’s where ideas happen. The constant, constant, constant engagement is not where you have innovation and ideas. Ideas happen when our mind wonders ... and you see something and go ‘I bet I could do that’. That’s called innovation.”
And that’s exactly what schools across the Border are doing in their classrooms with their mobile phone policies right now.
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