David Penberthy: Hey parents, if kids can get off their phones, so can you

If students can adhere to the Victorian Government’s statewide ban on mobile phone use in schools, adults should take a cue from the kids and start weaning off the damn things too, writes David Penberthy.

When Apple launched the iPad almost a decade ago, its advertising campaign was framed around a limitless horizon of learning where the massed sum of human knowledge would be available with the click of a finger.

All those fleeting images of Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings, the British Museum, the periodic table and the double helix, darting across the screen. It was a grand promise, and one that jars somewhat with the silly online reality of Fortnite, Candy Crush, and videos of cats that look like Hitler.

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Not to mention the massively serious downsides of our new lives online: The vacuous and brutal world of social media, where people amass friends like totems and become absorbed in their own appearance and ruthlessly judge others; the 24-hour nature of bullying in the digital age; the ability to access and collate information without truly analysing and absorbing it; the dying art of spelling and grammar amid the rise of autocorrect and text-speak, and; the fact we spend so much time online rather than outside that we are fatter than we have ever been.

Students at Victoria’s McKinnon Secondary put phones in their lockers. Picture: Jason Edwards/News Corp Australia

I know he’s not here to defend himself, but you could probably apportion Steve Jobs with some of the blame for the return of scurvy in this digitally driven indoor age.

It is not surprising our schools have become ground zero in the battle to remain intelligent and sociable in a digital world.

Year 8 seems to be the time these days when many kids get their first mobile phone.

The cheapest phone is itself vastly more powerful than any of the computers we had at high school, indeed from memory our school computer was so big it needed its own room, before the advent of the Mac II in the 1980s.

Any kid with any standard mobile phone has at their disposal the full gamut of websites, games and social media apps, giving them full access to all of the good and bad that the internet has on offer.

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A mate of mine started out as a schoolteacher in Adelaide a few years ago.

He sent me a plaintive text message the other night while marking English assignments saying he fears we are now living in a post-literate age.

Phone-addicted parents have taught kids to be anti-social. Picture: iStock

It is remarkable the extent to which language no longer seems to matter, amid a sea of emojis, abbreviations and misspellings, all of it reinforced by popular culture.

It is almost quaint to ask if anyone cares about the proper use of English any more.

The other thing is the vast amount of screen time clocked up by kids means pastimes such as reading are increasingly a thing of the past.

Against this backdrop, you can see why a debate is now under way as to whether we should ban phones completely in the school environment.

The Victorian Government announced this week it would implement a statewide ban across both the primary and secondary levels of the public education system. Many private schools have opted for limited or complete bans of a similar kind.

If students can peel themselves away from their devices, adults should take their lead and try doing the same. Picture: News Corp Australia

In South Australia, the state Opposition had its thunder stolen by the Vics, revealing that Shadow Cabinet had signed off on a total ban policy that it will take to the next state election.

It remains to be seen whether the Marshall Government will respond with a similar policy, or leave the current arrangements in place, where principals in concert with teachers and governing councils can devise a policy that best suits them.

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My views on this were informed by a conversation this week with a Victorian woman called Sue Bell, who heads up the Victorian Secondary Principals Association.

She made the very good point that, while a ban might be appropriate for younger kids, it was a paternalistic approach for senior students who would be better off being taught to manage their own phone use.

My daughter, who is in Year 11, is allowed to use her phone at school, and it doesn’t seem to be so addictive or corrosive that it is affecting her grades or causing her social distress.

Older kids are capable of managing these things if they are taught how.

The real issue here is that it is kids who are the canaries in the coalmine for the broader community.

Many kids can’t manage their phone use or their lives online because many adults are completely incapable of doing so either.

We have taught them how to be this distracted and anti-social.

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Just wander down Adelaide’s Rundle St or go to any restaurant and marvel at the number of couples or groups of people who are sitting there ostensibly “together” but absent-mindedly scrolling through their phone.

In a work setting, it is just as bad.

I can remember meetings where serious work issues were being discussed and staff had their eyes down looking at some website or were responding to a text, writing a tweet, possibly even checking their betting account.

It is bizarre the extent to which people have disengaged from each other in a face-to-face context, and will behave in a manner which in the olden days would have simply been described as rude. Ask any shop assistant how often they will serve a customer who doesn’t even speak to them because they can’t interrupt a call.

However heavy-handed a ban in schools might seem, you can understand how we got here, and see why more than two-thirds of respondents on The Advertiser’s online poll were in favour of the move.

If the ban becomes law, we might want to take our cue from the kids, and start weaning ourselves off the damn things a bit, too.

@penbo