Schools in the London borough of Barnet have launched an initiative to stop pupils bringing in smartphones.
While Smartphone Free-Childhood Barnet is a schools-led scheme, the local authority said it had ‘supported a borough-wide letter to go out to parents of up to 63,000 school pupils to make Barnet schools smartphone-free by September 2025’.
The council said most secondary schools in the borough would not allow new Year 7 students to bring in smartphones or smartwatches from September.
It added: ‘Research shows that children aged 11-15 are most vulnerable to negative influences from social media and internet access via smartphones.
‘We encourage parents to delay giving smartphones to children until at least age 14 and access to social media until age 16.’
