Pupils
Technology and teenage mental health
Andrea Saxel reports on the progress of Cranleigh’s smartphone initiative
At Cranleigh we are mid-way through the second year of a project that aims to minimise some of the negative impacts of technology on the mental health and well-being of our young people. A year ago we introduced our new smartphone policy in which Year 9 pupils, including boarders, were not allowed access to smartphones in school at all! Despite the incredulity with which this initiative was received by many people, its impact on our school has been largely positive. The policy has been embraced with much enthusiasm by our parents; our Sixth Formers understand the reasoning behind it; and though in a group setting it seems that most of our Year 9s oppose the policy, I have yet to come across a pupil who, in a small group or one-to-one setting, has been genuinely annoyed by it. In fact, more and more I hear them admit that their lives are easier and that they ‘actually talk to each other’. Cranleigh is in no way ‘anti-technology’. All our pupils have work iPads that are controlled by the school and their usage is restricted. Long-term, the hope is that pupils will have a more instinctive understanding of the difference between a work device and a personal device. Parental support has been overwhelming, and with their blessing we have introduced restrictions for our Year 10s and 11s too. They are not allowed any access to their smartphone devices during the working day, but do have a window to use them in the early evening. It probably goes without saying that this makes the working day much easier to manage for the teachers, and though en masse the pupils oppose these restrictions, there has been no real drive from the pupils to reverse them, even with the avenues of student council available to them. I do not want to paint a picture of a technology Utopia though! Yes, there are some parents that do not fully support our stance, and yes, there are pupils who bring in secret phones, but this is hardly a novel scenario when it comes to schools. However, the negative impact will always be minimised when access to technology is minimised for the majority, because the minority who abuse the rules end up being the outliers in their boarding community. The next question is how we tackle the issue amongst our Sixth Formers. If we as adults are not as good as we should be around smartphone usage, it stands to reason that our Sixth Formers won’t be either. But, because we act in loco parentis in a boarding environment, we need to find some kind of balance between giving our pupils the independence to manage their
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Summer 2019
own time and make their own mistakes, whilst also trying to protect them, particularly as they are not yet deemed adults as far as the law is concerned. Many of our parents have rightly asked whether we should have the same restrictions for Sixth Formers as for the younger pupils, but we are not convinced that this is the answer, particularly as they would undoubtedly be more sophisticated in finding their way around our policies! In any case, they are very nearly adults, so surely an educational stance would be the better approach. We are currently running trials in some of our boarding houses, where we secure their phones overnight, and for those who struggle to manage this area of their lives, we have put in very specific plans that restrict access during the day too. We do this in conjunction with plenty of conversation with the pupils involved, so that they feel they are taking ownership of this process, and end up feeling that they are taking control of their own lives. As we moved forward in this area, we realised that when we try to educate our pupils about the negative impacts this technology can have on their lives, they sometimes switch off, almost certainly because we are teachers and can come across as telling them what to do. To that end, we have started a new project, working with an expert in this field. Dr Emily Setty is an academic researcher at the University of Surrey, and her area of study involves the impact of technology on young people and their relationships. As part of the project, Dr Setty immersed herself in Cranleigh life for two weeks, spending time chatting to our pupils on an informal and confidential basis, in groups as well as one-to-one sessions, mainly in a relaxed boarding house setting. She also spent some time with Alliance, the highly popular student-led organisation that represents minority groups within our community. Their motto is ‘community, respect, equality’ and they aim to achieve this for all students at Cranleigh, so their input in this project was of particular interest to us. It was made clear to pupils that confidentiality would only be broken during this project in situations where a pupil was at risk of harm or abuse. Although we had concerns that our pupils might not fully engage with Emily because they saw it as a school project, rather than a genuine attempt to understand and find ways to positively impact on their lives, nothing could have been further from the reality. In typical Cranleigh fashion, they have been utterly open with her, and have really enjoyed the process of talking with someone who
