We've had a nasty wake-up call regarding smart phones in the playground. Having taken the decision not to buy our son a smart phone – opting instead for a $25 dollar phone from the post office for emergencies – we were horrified to hear from another parent that some of the 12 and 13-year-olds at our school had been watching hard-core, violent porn at lunchtime.
Victoria has banned mobile phones in schools. Is it time for NSW to follow?Credit:Alamy Stock Photo
It was a bold step last week for Victoria to ban students using mobile phones in all state schools, triggering plenty of debate on the issue, but I know many parents who would be very happy to see the same happen in NSW, myself included.
My youngest is in Year 7 at our local state school, where I have happily sent both my sons and seen them thrive. We thought we had taken the right steps to protect him, while still allowing him to use social media supervised at home so he didn’t feel like a social pariah.
But it seems this is bigger than anything parents can deal with alone.
Our school banned phones in the classroom this year, but when I brought up the issue of how phones were being used at lunchtime, they felt it would be tricky to get support to go the extra step of banning them in the playground just yet.
I understand different people have different attitudes to phones. Some parents want to keep in constant contact with their kids. Others seem to think all technology is good technology. But I'm guessing they would be outraged if the school sent home a permission note to show the kids a violent porn movie.
Last month a Canberra judge urged parents to supervise their children's internet use, after sentencing a man who claimed to have become addicted to child pornography when he was exposed to it at the age of 13.
It seems like a no-brainer to stop kids using phones in the classroom and playground. The NSW government brought in a ban on mobile phones in public primary schools this year, giving high schools the choice to opt in to the ban.
Extending it across state high schools would take the pressure off each school negotiating individually on a difficult subject, and give added weight to enforce the new rules.
Being exposed to porn at school is only one aspect of childhood safety. As well as reducing distraction in the classroom, the decision in Victoria was aimed at tackling cyber bullying, which is also contributing to rising levels of anxiety in children and teens.
The issue of children seeing inappropriate images through technology is nothing new, and there are still plenty of opportunities outside school hours, including at home. In a recent episode of Maggie Dent's ABC podcast, Parental as Anything, digital wellness expert Kristy Goodwin told of children stumbling across or accessing porn on smart TVs when parents forget to apply child-filtering software to this internet-connected device.
But I'd like to feel confident that between 9am and 3pm, Monday to Friday, while he's at school, my son won't be looking at the kind of images most of us don't want to see as adults.
Let them have one place where they can go and learn and be children without the shadow of the worst aspects of our world following them through the gate.
Tracey Trinder is a writer and artist.
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