Published On: September 4th, 2016|

The Guardian – Patrick Collinson

“‘Two others in my class have got one. When can I have one?’ That’s not the words of a teenager, but from a colleague’s six-year-old tugging at his parents to buy him a mobile phone. Needless to say, he won’t be getting one. His parent’s retort was: “You’ll have to wait until you go to secondary school.” But why should we assume that even 11 is the right age to have a mobile? Is it another case of parents, in effect, passing responsibility on to teachers? Smartphones are the technological wonder of our era. They are meant to be fabulously distracting. One in 10 adults reach for their smartphone immediately upon waking. Within 15 minutes of getting up, 55% of adults have checked theirs. These are the averages for adults; we can safely assume the figures for teenagers will be much higher. The same research, by Deloitte, found that one-fifth of 18- to 24-year-olds are looking at their smartphones when crossing the road. Only a fifth? One cheesed-off teacher tells me of the constant disruption to lessons from texting, tweeting and snapchatting. Phones are confiscated, but pupils are allowed to collect them at the end of the day. As a deterrent, it fails – the same kids are at it the next day.”(more)