Meeting of the Parliament 01 October 2025 [Draft]
I believe that it is time to ban mobile phones in all Scottish classrooms. We need to shield children from harmful content, misinformation, bullying and other social pressures and—as Pam Duncan-Glancy said—make the classroom a safe place in which to learn.
I was shocked to read that research by Ofcom indicates that a quarter of three and four-year-olds in the UK now have a smartphone and that, by the time they are 12, the percentage rises to 89 per cent. That is the current trend in society, and by the time children come to education, it is much harder for educators to control something that is going on outside.
With the rise in cyberbullying, our children are exposed to an unacceptable amount of danger. There is pressure on parents to provide smartphones—Willie Rennie was quite right to talk about peer pressure—and I think that that would dissolve to some extent if there was a ban on mobile phones in schools.
It would also take the pressure off headteachers themselves, although they would still have to deal with a minority of parents who may still want to keep phones in class. The Government appears to clearly support a ban as long as headteachers make the decision. That is what we are arguing over, and I think that it is a responsibility for Government. Given the trend that I talked about and the harm that is being done to children, it is a decision for Government to make.
I do not believe that such a decision would undermine the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 and the delivery of education by local government in any way whatsoever. The tech companies are incredibly powerful, and we know that there is a constant battle with them about social media content and a tension with the policies that we drive to reduce violence against women and girls. The tech companies’ algorithms drive people towards certain behaviours. One of my biggest reasons for supporting a ban on mobile phone use in schools is that an increasing body of data shows that being exposed to excessive social media is rewiring young brains during a critical window of their psychological development. That is my primary concern, and it always has been. I agree with Jenny Gilruth that we should listen to our headteachers, but we should also listen to our scientists. Their views are unequivocal and have been for a decade. I think that that is enough of a basis to say that we have a responsibility to impose a ban on mobile phones in schools.
The cabinet secretary is quite right that MSPs are some of the worst offenders, particularly during committee meetings—we know that. However, we are talking about children and the responsibility that we have towards them. That is why I am speaking in the debate. It is asking a lot of a child to ask them to navigate online content and to protect themselves. At some point in the future, I wonder whether those children will ask us why we did not act more strongly when we had the chance, and why we left it to them to make decisions about their use. Members may have noticed a recent survey of gen Z adults aged between 18 and 27, who have grown up with social media. Members can believe this or not, but the survey found that nearly half them wished that TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter—or X—had never been invented. That generation is already alive to the dangers of smart phone use.
In my final minute, or just under a minute, I want to touch on the wider harms that Patrick Harvie spoke about. He was quite right to say that, by banning mobile phones in schools, we will not reduce all the harm. However, we know that smartphones are used, especially by boys, for intimate image abuse, and that 12-year-olds are exposed to pornography on smartphones. It is as much about protecting boys as it is about protecting women and girls. Clearly, that is a wider issue, but much of that behaviour goes on in schools. For some time, I have been calling on the Government to collect data on what is going on in our schools, because England and Wales have done that. I hope that we will legislate further on what needs to be done to tackle the creation of that content and to teach children that that is unacceptable behaviour.
For those reasons, I believe that this generation expects the Government to take big decisions. I think that the time has come for there to be a national ban on mobile phones in our classrooms.
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