Minister for Education urged to ban use of phones as learning tools in classrooms

Green Party Senator Róisín Garvey said it was a 'huge concern' that many students still have their phones on them in classrooms. Photograph: iStockhas been urged to instruct secondary schools to ban the use of phones as a learning tool in classrooms because it is too much of a distraction for students.

She said some schools have computer tablets and can use Teams, but a lot of schools do not and use phones. Ms Seery Kearney highlighted research from CyberSafeKids that almost one-quarter of six-year-olds have their own smartphone while 45 per cent of 10-year-olds are allowed use smartphones in their bedroom. The research also found that 28 per cent of parents use parental controls while 20 per cent feel the good the internet could bring their children outweighs the risks.

“Some of them had phones before the age of six,” the Senator said. Such early ownership caused mental health issues “and they wished they’d never had a phone”.said that while she understood the concern about the matter, banning smartphone ownership for under-13s was “fraught with difficulty” and raises complex questions about regulation.

Ms Martin said that in regulating the matter there would be difficulty in identifying the “owner” of the phone and then identifying “who would be liable for sanction for a breach of any ban would be complicated, given that the purchaser and user of a phone are not necessarily the same”.“Banning an age cohort from owning a smartphone in one EU member state would raise issues with regard to the EU single market principles of freedom of movement of goods and services,” Ms Martin said.

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