75 Sheffield children give up their mobile phones
“You don’t have to work in education to see the growing impact that modern mobile phones increasingly have on our children”
Sheffield’s largest secondary school is teaming up with four of their feeder primary schools to give their school kids a taste of life before smart phones.
Seventy-five pupils across Ecclesfield Secondary School, Windmill Hill Primary, Ecclesfield Primary, High Green Primary and Lound Juniors have signed up for the innovative ‘S35 Unplugged’ project which will see pupils aged between 4 and 16 voluntarily giving up their smart phones for 3 weeks!
The project kicked off this week with a celebration event at Ecclesfield School, which saw the pupils and some staff members handing in their smart phones, and for the younger kids other devices such as iPads and games consoles, and speaking bravely about why they've chosen to take part.
The S35 Unplugged project is a collaboration between the five North-Sheffield schools, and a research agency Revealing Reality. It is an expansion on the successful Ecclesfield Smart-Phone project launched last year, which saw 32 pupils from Ecclesfield School taking part and Sheffield Hallam University conducting research into the impacts on the children of giving up their smart phones for three months.
The project is designed to tackle concern from the school about the amount of time young people spend on their phones and the impact that is having on their education and wellbeing. The increased exposure is widely thought to contribute to sleep problems, which impacts on concentration, less desire to take part in physical activity, and children spending more of their life online and withdrawing from the world around them, which impacts on their social and interaction skills.
Pupils taking part in S35 Unplugged volunteer to give up their smart phones for a full three weeks. School in turn gives them ‘brick phones’ as a replacement so that they can make phone calls but are freed from the addictive elements that hook children into modern mobiles.
Liz Hunter, who teaches Personal, Social, Health, Careers and Citizenship Education (PSHCE) at Ecclesfield, and leads on the programme said: “This year’s expansion of the project to include pupils from local primary schools, and to more than double the number of pupils taking part, is an exciting step forward for understanding the impacts that smart phones have on the lives of young people.
“You don’t have to work in education to see the growing impact that modern mobile phones increasingly have on our children.
“Last year, not only did the project show the pupils who took part what life is like without their phones, they reported so many positives of having the break from life online, particularly to their health and wellbeing. They reported things like less anxiety and better friendships. A number of them were quite upset about getting their phones back at the end of the project because they’d found their time without them so liberating!
“We’re so excited to be taking this project to the next level with our partner primary schools. We know that it was so beneficial for the young people who took part last year, so now it’s all about how we can spread the message and try and encourage our kids to live less of their lives online.”
Children at the event spoke about looking forward to spending more time with their families, more time on school work, picking up new hobbies, and being free of their addictions.