I’ve written about all this before, but I was previously focussed on mobile devices in the classroom and the digital revolution – a half-century revolution in the making. The Labour Party has finally emerged from its grieving loss in the referendum (I wrote about it here) to pass a social media ban for under-16s, one of only a handful of countries that has such a ban. There’s a saying in the business world: if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. Nowhere is this more evident than in the tech industry’s colonisation of childhood. Social media platforms, built by the world’s most deleterious but incredibly smart engineers, are designed to be as, if not more, addictive than slot machines – and they have wormed their way into the very fabric of adolescence.
Australia is finally drawing a line in the sand. A landmark decision to ban social media for under-16s aims to curb the relentless dopamine drip produced by none other than the mendacious engineers at META and TikTok – the worldwide propaganda arm of the CCP. Note – TikTok was banned on all government employees’ telephones in April 2023 and is unavailable in China. While I personally think it’s taken too long for this ban, I recognise the difficulty and praise the government for shielding young minds from an attention economy that views them as nothing more than a revenue stream. This is the right move. Now, it’s time for schools to take it a step further: a full-scale eviction of smartphones and unnecessary digital devices from the classroom.
Education is meant to be a space for intellectual and personal growth, not a 7-hour episode of “Distraction Island.” Every ping, notification, and scroll is a tax on cognitive bandwidth necessary for effective learning. In recent years, schools have welcomed digital devices with open arms, lured by the siren song of 21st-century learning. Tablets replaced textbooks, laptops substituted for notebooks, and the argument was made that students should be future-ready, whatever that’s supposed to mean. But like any Faustian bargain, this deal came with a cost.
The OECD’s 2015 report on students, computers, and learning found that while moderate computer use in education can be beneficial, excessive use is associated with worse learning outcomes (OECD, 2015). Similarly, a 2018 study from MIT found that banning laptops in classrooms led to significant improvements in student performance, particularly among lower-achieving students (Carter et al., 2018). The reason? The mere presence of a screen—even if unused—reduces cognitive performance, a phenomenon psychologists call “brain drain” (Ward et al., 2017).
As teachers, we know this intuitively. The moment a phone or laptop lands on a desk, attention splinters. Even the most well-intentioned student struggles to resist the gravitational pull of TikTok, Snapchat, or whatever digital crack is trending. Social media algorithms—driven by billion-dollar companies—aren’t just built to engage; they’re built to addict and monetise – and every time we allow this in our classrooms, we are encouraging it. The only way to win this game is not to play.
Australia’s decision to ban social media for those under 16, in my view, is a necessary intervention. This isn’t about digital puritanism or a nostalgic yearning for a pre-internet world (although that sounds serene); it’s about safeguarding children from industries that monetise distraction and insecurity.
Consider this: The American Surgeon General has issued warnings about the mental health risks of social media for teens, linking it to “increased anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances.” A decade of research has shown that adolescents who spend more than three hours per day on social media are at twice the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes (Twenge et al., 2018). And yet, the average teen today spends nearly five hours daily doomscrolling.
For schools, this ban should be a wake-up call. If social media is damaging enough to warrant government intervention, why do we tolerate its pervasive presence in our classrooms? A ban on mobile devices in schools isn’t just about limiting distractions; it’s about rewiring the way students engage with learning. In my post, Paper Over Pixels, I wrote about classrooms being spaces of deep work, not endless stimulation. We have to shift the focus back to reading, writing, discussion, and critical thinking, not because we long for the past, but because the science is clear: more traditional methods of learning with paper and pen are still the most effective.
Handwriting has been shown to boost memory retention more effectively than typing (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). Reading printed text—rather than digital—improves comprehension and focus (Delgado et al., 2018). And when students take notes on paper instead of a laptop, they perform better on conceptual understanding tests (Delgado et al., 2018). None of this means we should abandon technology entirely. Used strategically and intentionally, digital tools can be valuable. But the idea that more screen time equals better learning has been thoroughly debunked. At some point, the solution isn’t better apps or more engaging platforms; it’s fewer distractions!
If education were a business – hmmm…. That sounds like another post – this would be a market failure… of epic proportions. In their rush to use the next best thing, schools have brought in technology that most teachers can’t use effectively and that students exploit because of the unsubstantiated claim that all or most technology is an upgrade. They mistook Silicon Valley’s profit motives for pedagogical wisdom, ignoring the cognitive science research in favour of the latest new app that would revolutionise the classroom.
This is what we’ve done with the education of our children. We traded depth for convenience, focus for engagement, and discipline for accessibility. And now, we’re paying the price in declining literacy, shrinking attention spans, a generation struggling to engage in sustained thought, and, in Australia, some of the worst-behaved students in the world.
Australia’s move to ban social media for under-16s is an acknowledgment of a truth we’ve been reluctant to face: unregulated digital consumption is harming our youth. But the next step is just as crucial: schools must ENFORCE a no-smartphone policy during school hours. As I’ve written here before, we have a ban, but the enforcement of that ban is severely lacking. Attention, as the social media companies figured out, is our most valuable resource. How will we ensure that our students put their most valuable resource to their best use?
Maximising Student Potential 