Lynton Grace | Here’s how to make SA’s school mobile phone ban stronger

The results are in – the ban on mobile phones in SA’s schools was a huge success. Now we can make it even better, writes Lynton Grace.

The decision to ban students from using mobile phones during school hours was a no-brainer – and should have happened earlier.

It’s a testament to those high schools who chose to put the ban in place earlier as a trial and have seen a real shift in culture.

Figures reveal a 30 per cent drop in violent schoolyard incidents since the statewide introduction of the ban in term three last year. That’s an almost instant change, and quite remarkable.

But it’s not just violence that’s affected.

The decision to ban phones in schools should have happened earlier, according to Lynton Grace. Picture: iStock

A UK study also showed test scores significantly increased among 16-year-old students after phones were banned in classrooms – the equivalent of five extra days added to the school year. The effects on low-achieving students were doubled.

In Spain and Norway, grades improved and bullying dropped.

There’s no doubt the ban has been positive. So what’s next? Forcing students to leave their phones at home and banning them from school property completely is probably too far.

Freed from their phones, we have an opportunity to teach children about mobiles – and the internet.

Lots of schools already run classes about the dangers of cyber-bullying and how to handle it.

That kind of teaching should widen into the true aim of social media and ‘free’ games – the kids.

As we tell our kids at home, if something is free, then you are the product.

Schools should be teaching kids how ‘free’ games are just colourful advertising, how they create addiction and dopamine spikes.

How algorithms work, how social media sites track them, gather information from an early age, target them with ads – how Spotify or Google or Apple record their app usage, how ‘free’ versions try to force them into paying.

And, most importantly, the impact of mobiles on young kids’ brains. How this generation, and all the others, are growing up so incredibly differently to the ones before.

Kids who grow up in the digital age have a much different experience than previous generations.

As a parent who has a three kids (one teenager I suspect may secretly welcome the ban) giving them the deepest possible understanding of the internet and its effect on their minds is a priority.

SA’s mobile phone ban had a rocky beginning. TikTok was awash with videos of students showing how to break out the pouches or ways to get around it, by having a secret, second phone.

And it was weird at first – we went from communicating instantly via text during the school day (when our teenager actually replied, of course) to having to wait until after school ended. That made for an abrupt shift.

But, there’s always the school phone and my parents never messaged me during school. That was unthinkable. Wait, maybe I know how he felt …

Some Adelaide schools were genuinely struggling with the anti-social behaviour phones allowed – Golden Grove, for example, was engulfed in controversy after a spate of violent incidents and anti-social student behaviour in 2022, much of it videoed and posted online. By early 2023, it was already turning around.

Salisbury High School principal Sylvia Groves said the ban produced extraordinary results after it implemented it early – including the launch of clubs at break times for Lego, chess, design, dance, and more.

That’s just what our schools need. Kids, finding their tribes, their clubs, themselves, other kids into the stuff they’re into.