A NEW report has found that blanket bans on phones in Irish schools are not in the best interests of children.
The report, entitled One Size Does Not Fit All, also found that such bans are not effective in protecting children's rights from the potential harm of phones and social media.
Instead, the Ombudsman for Children's Office (OCO), who produced the report with its Youth Advisory Panel (YAP), is calling on the government to consider the impact of such bans on children's rights.
This includes their right to have a voice, as well as the diversity of individual schools and students and the age and maturity levels of children when rules around phones are being created.
"Phones play a such big part in young people's lives; it's how they communicate with each other and share content online and so any decision to ban phones in schools is going to have an equally big impact," said the OCO's head of policy, Dr Tricia Keilthy.
Recommendations
As well as presenting the views of young people on phone bans in schools, the report brings together national and international research from a children's rights perspective on the issue.
The report illustrates why we need to move beyond an over-simplistic focus on bans to an approach that supports children to competently and confidently navigate the digital world, and which addresses root causes of the challenges children face online.
The OCO makes five recommendations, which it hopes will be used by policy makers to guide decision making on this issue.
These include not introducing blanket bans in schools; investing more in resources for digital education and improving schools; carrying out more research; designing different approaches to phone rules; and increasing support, education and awareness for parents, teachers and other adults.
'Empowering students'
"It is completely understandable that parents, teachers and indeed government would have concerns about the negative impact of phones at school, but a blanket ban is not the way to mitigate this risk," said Dr Keilthy.
"Our report, One Size Does Not Fit All, highlights that this is a much more nuanced issue and that the decision to ban phones in schools doesn't take children's views — or indeed their rights — into account."
She added: "The YAP told us that banning phones at school can have just as negative an impact on their rights as the phones themselves, and that phones have many other uses at school other than just communication.
"They told us, for example, how they use their phones to learn, stay informed, look after their health, and even connect with their culture, language and beliefs.
"The young people also describe how they have not had a say in the decision to ban phones nor have their views been taken into account.
"The message from young people is clear — we must move beyond talk of bans and adopt a more holistic, evidence-based and creative approach to addressing the problems that phone use creates and often exacerbates, both in schools and beyond the school gates.
"In practice this will mean empowering students through a standalone digital literacy programme and creating safe spaces online by strengthening the regulation of online service providers."
