Smartphones should be locked away in sealed pouches or lockers in all schools to help prevent more teenagers joining the youth unemployment crisis, the Government’s work tsar has warned.
This summer, Labour brought in a smartphone ban in English schools, which legally required headteachers to ensure their classrooms and playgrounds are phone-free environments.
However, some experts have warned the current measures, which leave schools to decide how to enforce the guidance, are giving teachers a lack of clarity.
Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary who is leading a review into youth unemployment, is calling for the use of tougher and more restrictive measures to become universal in schools across England.
Milburn has previously warned the UK is facing an “economic catastrophe” unless it helps a “bedroom generation” of young people whose brains have been “rewired” by smartphones.
“A classroom should be one of the few places left where a young person isn’t pulled back to the screen,” Milburn told The i Paper.
“A phone-free school day has to mean exactly that – more restrictive measures, not teachers left to police it alone. We will have failed younger people if we allow them to stay on their phones, sleep badly, become more anxious, and miss out on critical years in their development at school.”
The ‘bedroom generation’
England’s smartphone ban became mandatory from 1 September, but some schools still have “no see, no hear” policies, where phones can remain with students as long as they are switched off and kept in bags.
A survey by the Children’s Commissioner carried out last year – before the guidance became a legal requirement – found eight in 10 schools operated such a policy.
Lockable and signal-blocking phone pouches, which can only be unlocked by magnets installed outside the gates when students leave, can be costly at around £15 each for state secondaries which average around 1,000 pupils, although some schools ask parents to foot the bill.
Milburn – whose review is set to be published next month and is likely to shape the Government’s policy on youth employment and welfare – also thinks that parents have a role to play in managing children’s phone use at home to rescue “the bedroom generation”.
The Blair-era Labour stalwart was commissioned to carry out the review as the number of people aged 16 to 24 years old who are not in education, employment or training (Neet) has risen to around one million in recent years.
Milburn warns young people who spend more time on a phone or on social media are more likely to have poor mental health and poor sleep, which will “make it harder to engage with education and work”.
Peter Hyman and Shuab Gamote, who have worked with Milburn and collected testimony from 400 young people, have found “the same pattern” across the country: “young people doomscrolling into the early hours, not sleeping until 3 am, 4 am, sometimes later, with the sleep-wake cycle drifting until it becomes almost impossible to reverse.”
Milburn added: “A glowing screen and a feed that never stops do not provide the foundation for a happy or healthy future.
“We owe this generation their childhood back.”
Labour plans to use the same model for a social media ban as Australia, which prohibits platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and X but not messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has suggested that the ban for under-16s will come into force in spring 2027. Certain features on other online services, like livestreaming children, which are considered “harmful”, will be restricted for under-18s. More details are expected before the end of the year.
Public policy and parents must work together
“Families cannot fix this alone,” Milburn said. “Public policy has a role to play too. If we are serious about breaking that cycle, we need to restrict social media access for under-16s.”
As things stand, Milburn and his fellow researchers fear that logging on at 11pm has become a normal part of growing up and created a cycle that is already feeding Britain’s Neets crisis before these children are even teenagers.
Professor Peter Fonagy’s independent review of the rise in prevalence of common mental health conditions among young people, which has run in parallel with Milburn’s research, has found that social media fuels greater distress and worse mental health.
Milburn said this confirms what young people have told him “again and again”.
“They can’t stop scrolling,” he said. “It keeps them up until the early hours, and they turn up to school exhausted and anxious, not ready to learn.”
Mobile phones are not currently banned in Scotland and Wales, with schools asked to follow non-statutory guidance encouraging them to limit the use of devices.
‘My whole life is on a smartphone’
“I am in sixth form, and I often find myself depending on my phone for research. But I feel that it also has become a problem because when I’m upset, I go on my phone; when I’m bored, I go on my phone.
I regularly sleep with my phone on, watching a movie or show, and I’ve noticed that this has been making me wake up continuously during the night and therefore makes me so incredibly exhausted during the day.
My daily screen time is so incredibly high, at around 8-9 hours – it’s quite embarrassing to share this.
I think they should completely ban phones and social media in school. But sixth-form students should have more lenient rules, such as using phones at breaks and lunch periods. I don’t think they should be in classes, though.”
Emi Wilson, 17, student from London
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