Arabella Northey, Partnerships Manager at Seqrd Technology, explains why removing student’s devices does not always eliminate the original problem.
Health Professionals for Safer Screens have revealed troubling statistics: over 96% of students cannot focus for even one hour without checking their phone, and 41% of teenagers lose more than 8 hours daily to screens. While phone-free classroom policies help, boarding schools face a deeper challenge, how do we foster healthy digital habits when students live with their devices around the clock?
If we ban and remove all tech how will that help? Can teenagers develop the skills needed to manage their focus, create digital free routines or find alternative activities to scrolling? Complete elimination ignores reality: teenagers need apps for independence—rail timetables, banking, sports team communications, and email. If students don’t develop digital resilience during their school years, when will they learn? Waiting until they’re 17 and leaving for university is too late.
Education, not elimination, must be the foundation. Yet education alone isn’t enough without the right tools to support it.
This is where SchoolsMobile creates a comprehensive safety net that travels with your pupils on their personal devices. Whether they’re in boarding houses, at home with their parents, or connecting to Wi-Fi at the home of a friend, the same robust protection continues automatically. Schools can customise policies to ensure age-appropriate content access and apply downtime settings that stop the constant notification barrage, essential for establishing healthy boundaries in residential settings.
The platform addresses what phone-free classrooms cannot: the hours between lessons, evenings in boarding houses, and weekends when supervision is less intensive. By blocking inappropriate content and managing screen time across all settings, SchoolsMobile helps boarding schools extend their duty of care beyond the classroom.
The goal isn’t to eliminate technology, it’s to help pupils thrive with it safely. For boarding schools responsible for students 24/7, that means equipping young people with both the skills and the guardrails they need to develop lasting digital wellbeing.
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