Bridget Phillipson<\/a>, in July that they would pursue legal action, arguing that current guidance, which allows headteachers to decide how smartphones are used, is unlawful and unsafe for children.<\/p>\n\u201cVideos were going around all the time,\u201d McShea recalls of her time at secondary school from year 7 onwards. \u201cMy parents were strict at home but at school people can airdrop you videos or show you their screen without invitation, to see your reaction.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy school had a \u2018see it, hear it, lose it\u2019 policy, but in reality we just used them under the desk, in the toilets, during lunch break, in the playground, on the bus, even in the corridors. It was impossible for the teachers to stop us.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that affected me the most was a video of two young children playing with a gun. One shot the other accidentally and she died. We were getting off the bus and a friend came over to me with it on her phone. I had to go home early that day. I was so shocked I couldn\u2019t sleep. I still think about that video three years later.<\/p>\n
Katie Moore, 43, a mother-of-three from Northampton has also joined as a claimant after her 18-year-old daughter told her she had been shown \u201cdick pics\u201d in school changing rooms and anime porn in WhatsApp groups, and that a student had accessed Omegle, a video chatroom, in her year 9 form room, which exposed her to men who were masturbating.<\/p>\n
\u201cI only found this out years later \u2013 back when she was 13 she didn\u2019t feel she could tell me because she didn\u2019t want to get into trouble and she knew I\u2019d take her phone away,\u201d Moore said. \u201cAs a mum I can try my best to protect my children at home, yet they can go to school and be exposed to explicit harmful material on another student\u2019s smartphone. Until smartphones are prohibited items, we have no reassurance that this sort of thing won\u2019t happen to our children during the school day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Child protection specialist and former social worker Dr Ciar\u00e1n Murphy is one of the witnesses in the case.<\/p>\n
Lawyers representing the claimants say there is extensive evidence that smartphone policy recommended in the current government guidance, and implemented by 79% of secondary schools, does not work. They point to a range of serious safeguarding incidents that are commonplace throughout the school day and on the journey to and from school.<\/p>\n
James Gardner of Conrathe Gardner LLP, acting for the claimants, said: \u201cThe government is well aware of the serious harms caused to children as a result of smartphones in school settings. They had a golden opportunity to put it right with a national ban when they issued safeguarding guidance this autumn \u2013 but they decided to ignore the problem once again. Bridget Phillipson is putting the nation\u2019s children in harm\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 17-year-old girl who says she was exposed to horrific images and videos including porn, a shooting and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-254023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254023","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=254023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}