Nearly a fifth of parents regret having given their children a smartphone when they did, a survey shows.<\/p>\n
Two thirds of parents surveyed by a charity said they had given their child a smartphone. The most common age for a child to receive a device was 11, with 20 per cent of parents giving it at that age usually in preparation for secondary school, the poll by the charity Parentkind found.<\/p>\n
Fourteen per cent of parents gave a phone to children aged nine or younger. However, 18 per cent regretted having given their child the device when they did.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The psychologist who won\u2019t let her kids have phones<\/a><\/p>\n A separate project has revealed the negative impact of the phones, according to teachers. School staff were encouraged to submit their views anonymously by the campaign group Smartphone Free Childhood.<\/p>\n The dozens of submissions include teachers dealing with nine-year-olds receiving nudes in group chats and being contacted by strangers, boys assaulting another pupil, filming it and sharing the video, teenagers filming sexual encounters to share in chats and boys sharing misogynistic content and creating \u201clibraries\u201d of photos of female teachers.<\/p>\n One senior teacher from an inner-city school in Berkshire said: \u201cI have heads of year come to me at least once a week with issues they are facing either because of social media or made worse by social media. Some things stay with you, like an 11-year-old whose older brother had taken a photo of him naked and shared it on WhatsApp.<\/p>\n \u201cIt went around the whole school and two local schools, too. It was too late by the time he bravely came to tell us. Their mum found out last. She was utterly horrified.\u201d<\/p>\n A secondary teacher from Wiltshire who returned after ten years away raising a family said: \u201cI have been shocked by how different teenagers seem to be now. I am so worried by their lack of focus, inability to communicate with each other and the real aggression shown by some students.<\/p>\n \u201cThey come across as less able to co-operate and to build a relationship with, and it really saddens me. I also had a number of students literally fall asleep in my classes and they\u2019ve told me that they were awake all night on their phones. That just didn\u2019t happen ten years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Another teacher said: \u201cI just started at a top boarding school where new third formers all get Microsoft Surfaces. In the first lesson when I asked them to take their pens out<\/a>, only one student could.\u201d<\/p>\n One teacher from a secondary in Essex said: \u201cAt my school we have a phone ban. Students aren\u2019t allowed to use phones in lessons or during break or lunch. If they are seen, they are confiscated. But we all know they have them. We all know they go to the toilet during lessons to check social media or message their friends. We all know they are constantly distracted by them \u2014 but we can\u2019t follow them into the toilets to take their phone off them.\u201d<\/p>\n