How to navigate screen time and technology.

IN THE SECOND PART OF OUR SERIES ON PARENTING AND EDUCATION, WE TACKLE THE TOUGH ISSUE OF SCREEN TIME

If you’re a parent you’ll have heard these three plaintive comments from your kids:

‘Everyone else’s parents let them.’ ‘But I’ll be the only one without one.’

‘Mum, you need to get with the times!’

What’s more, these complaints from our kids are usually to do with mobile phones or the use of them.

Having been an issue at home, the mobile phone debate is now heating up in schools as educators and politicians argue their place in our learning environments. French school students will be banned from using mobile phones anywhere on school grounds in September, while here, the NSW government has ordered an Australia-first review of the use of smartphones in schools.

The review will investigate phone use by children and teens in schools, and examine their impact on learning and their link to cyberbullying.

As NSW education minister Rob Stokes explained: ‘While smartphones connect us to the world in ways never imagined just a decade ago, they raise issues that previous generations have not had to deal with.’

Currently, school principals make their own policies, but as educators globally discuss the impact of devices in schools, there are growing calls for a national policy. One expert said mobile phone distraction was to blame for Australia sliding down the PISA rankings, while Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham says smartphones should be banned in classrooms. Meanwhile, others believe the devices have become vital instruments that aid learning.

Indeed, for every argument saying they’re disruptive and make teachers’ lives hell, there’s another saying they’re an essential tool of the future and that instead of phones being banned, kids should be taught to self-regulate.

NSW Secondary Principals’ Council president Chris Presland went so far as to say removing phones would educationally disadvantage our students.

‘We talk about trying to stimulate STEM education in our schools – science, technology, engineering and mathematics,’ he said. ‘And at the same time, it seems quite bizarre that we’re talking about banning the most obvious forms of technology at our disposal.’

While phone use has galloped ahead of our research into the phenomenon, a 2015 study by the London School of Economics found that banning phones actually gave pupils an extra