{"id":17603,"date":"2025-07-23T09:44:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T09:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/17603\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T09:44:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T09:44:16","slug":"does-a-school-smartphone-ban-make-a-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/17603\/","title":{"rendered":"Does a school smartphone ban make a difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The time away from scrolling meant there had been more opportunities to do other things, Meghan said.<\/p>\n

“I got more homework done but talking to my family more was my favourite thing,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Before if I was upset I’d go to my room and scroll on TikTok, but now I didn’t have my phone so I chatted much more to my mum.”<\/p>\n

The idea for the project came from Liz Hunter, who teaches Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship Education at Ecclesfield.<\/p>\n

“You don’t have to work in education to see the growing impact that modern mobile phones increasingly have on our children,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Hunter said those who took part in the project had reported “so many positives, things like less anxiety, better friendships, better sleep, and more time to engage in other activities”.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, a Parliamentary bill that had suggested banning smartphones in schools and addictive algorithms<\/a> aimed at young teenagers was watered down to gain government support.<\/p>\n

Head teacher Richard Walkden, who has been in charge for eight years as smartphone use has become a greater talking point across the UK, said he was proud of the students and staff who took part.<\/p>\n

“My role is to protect childhood,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We banned mobile phones from school many years ago. They terrify me. They make kids grow up quicker.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The time away from scrolling meant there had been more opportunities to do other things, Meghan said. “I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-17603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-mobile","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}