When I saw the headline that mobile phones were going to be banned in Irish secondary schools, I thought, I’ll wait for the details. Minister for Education Norma Foley would have us believe that this proposed ban is radical and groundbreaking. It isn’t.
The Irish Times says that “Parents who need to contact their children while in class will be advised to leave messages through the school office under new guidance on implementing a mobile phone ban across all schools. The letter, from Minister for Education Norma Foley to school managers, sets out in greater detail how the ban will operate. It acknowledges that parents may permit their children to carry and access their phones during travel to and from school. It says there should be no access to devices during the school day and they may be placed in lockers or cubbies. Schools may allow phones to be stored in the students’ bags during the school day, if switched off.” https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/2024/08/28/schools-issued-with-details-on-policing-mobile-phone-ban/
This is how my daughter’s secondary school operated last year. It was obvious that teenagers could have their phones going to and from school as arrangements for after school activities and travel often change. I assume that locking mobile phones away in either lockers or bags is already standard in most secondary schools. Does the Minister really believe that until now and her proposed ban teenagers were sitting in front of their teacher scrolling through TikTok while she was trying to teach trigonometry? I’d say that was unlikely. So, the news is, no news. Not that I disagree with the direction of travel. Mobile phones and social media are bad for the mental health of teenagers. Does anyone disagree with this now? https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/how-dangerous-smartphones-children-ban-schools-dk7crxkdr
But once Minister Foley is finished with the phone addicted teenagers, can she set out some guidelines for another phone addicted class of people. These lot are never off their mobile phones. These are the rude people texting at the dinner table, scrolling in the queue at the Post Office, watching something on Netflix on their tiny phone screen on every single form of public transport. Even when they are with their families, they are not really with their families because they are on their phones checking, glancing, liking and retweeting something that always seems to be more important than conversing with their loved ones, who are sitting right in front of them. I’m talking about The Adults. Because when it comes to mobile phone addiction you know, and I know that if the children are bad, the parents – you and I – are far, far worse.
Sweet suffering Joseph spare me the lecturing on how bad the youth are, when the elders are so much worse. Andrew O’Neill, head teacher of the All Saints Catholic College, a secondary school in west London states that “Kids are too connected to their phones when they need to be connecting with people.” Is that so Mr O’Neill, is that so?
If you ask me, it is the parents who are too connected with their phones, not just the children. Everywhere I go these days parents are often ignoring their children and instead on their phones. And it starts young, does it not? How many times have you been out and about or in a coffee shop and looked around and seen a mother with her baby or young child and the mother is on her phone? The baby is looking at mummy, but mummy is only interested in the phone. Yes, yes I’ve done it plenty of times myself – but that does not make it right.
Toddlers learn from a young age that there must be something magical about these square devices that are taking up all of mum and dad’s attention. “I don’t like the phone because my [parents] are on their phone every day,” one second-grader wrote. “A phone is sometimes a really bad [habit]. I hate my mom’s phone and I wish she never had one.”
It is the parents who interrupt a bedtime story to check a message that could have waited. This together with employers demanding that everyone be available out of traditional working hours has made things 100 times worse. I must interrupt dinner time to answer a work e-mail. Why? I’m sure it can wait.
It is adults who check their mobile phones last thing at night and first thing in the morning. I can honestly say that along with men wearing hoodies, adult mobile phone use and how downright rude everyone is, is my biggest whinge. I’m really in my stride now, you’ve really got me going.
You must understand that once upon a time, before Steve Jobs made the iPhone and connected the internet to our hands, people used to observe the world and those around them. They could also hold a conversation and look their lunch companion in the eye. For instance, in my favourite book the Age of Innocence, much of the book is based upon the fact that everyone is observing and surveying everyone else.
“From its first scene, the novel is conditioning its readers in how to watch and judge. All the main players are in their opera boxes, observing one another instead of the production of “Faust.” Newland Archer enters the club box at the old Academy of Music, and trains his eye on his fiancée, May Welland. Next to him, Lawrence Lefferts, “the foremost authority on ‘form’ in New York,” swivels his opera glass toward the same box and catches a glimpse of Ellen Olenska, the woman who will poach Newland’s heart. He hands the glasses to Sillerton Jackson, society’s authority on lineage and rank, who takes in the Countess Olenska—freshly returned home to the United States, after a disastrous, abusive marriage in Europe—and proclaims his amazement that she would dare to show her face in public. We’re watching the characters watch one another.” Surveillance is constant.
Not these days. These days everyone is head down, eyes on a screen. And you miss a lot, you really do. Watching and judging, along with bellyaching are my favourite things, so the folks in the Age of Innocence are mind kind of people. (They are also fabulously wealthy.)
But all is not lost. I truly believe that. On a plane back from Paris a few weeks ago I sat beside a mother and her daughter who was about 7 or 8. For the entire flight, all of it, the mother spoke and played word games with her daughter. Neither had any screen whatsoever. The mother didn’t pick her phone up once. It was lovely to see, a minor miracle and it really gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. I was able to observe this closely as my own two girls were watching something on their devices. What can I say, you win some, you lose some.
If you feel you are addicted to your phone, you can change. The first thing to remember is it’s not your fault; these wretched devices and in particular social media were designed to be additive. Once you accept this and are motivated to change you could read or listen to Cal Newport and his book Digital Minimalism. He is not someone who advocates throwing your phone in a lake but has some excellent advice on controlling your phone and social media use.
So, the next time you feel like lecturing your teen on their phone use, it might be best to put your own phone down first.