Smartphones Are Being Used By School Children To Torment Teachers In The Classroom

A trainee teacher in the maths department shifting from foot to foot outside the head of year 9’s office, glancing down anxiously at his phone. I stopped to ask him if he was OK.

- WILL YATES

Without saying anything, he showed me his phone screen. On it was an Instagram direct message request from an account with the name and profile picture of one of year 9’s most notorious students. It read: “Open for a surprise x.”

My eyes widened. There was nothing I could do to help him: he and I both knew that he was going to spend his afternoon phoning parents, sanctioning pupils, talking to pastoral staff, writing up safeguarding concerns – and trying to catch up on all the work he would be missing in the process. I patted him on the shoulder and went on my way.

To say that mobile phones aren’t good for schoolchildren is to drastically understate just how pernicious they are in a school context.

During my time in the classroom, I came across students using mobile phones to covertly record teachers and compile them into threatening YouTube videos. There were multiple incidents of attempted identity fraud (my year 8 class once tried to pose as me on TikTok, while others harassed a married teacher on LinkedIn under another teacher’s name).