For months, my children have been telling me to use my phone less. My six-year-old daughter even made me a reward chart for the nights I leave my camera downstairs. When I have seven stickers, she writes me a poem or draws me a drawing. For her and her nine-year-old brother, excessive smartphone use is now undeniably bad.

They never really had an opinion on any of this before. I’m sure this change is a result of changes they have seen at their school, a private primary to secondary school in south London, which has banned the use of smartphones throughout the school day at following discussions that parents, including me, initiated with them in March. .

At the time, it felt like Britain was leading a global movement to protect children from the dangers of smartphones and social media. The grassroots Smartphone Free Childhood movement, launched in February, has seen thousands of parents embrace its mission, putting pressure on schools and the government for change.

Then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was considering banning smartphones for under-16s. In May, a report from the House of Commons education committee urged the next government to impose a ban. Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, a book exploring the link between smartphones and declining childhood mental health, published in April, suddenly appeared everywhere and was cited in dozens of articles in national newspapers calling to a legislative change.

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This week, however, the Labor government said it was no longer considering imposing a blanket legal ban because school principals “already have the power to ban phones”.

This is a mistake. A national survey of parents released this week suggests that one in seven children still spend seven or more hours on electronic devices each day, more time than they actually spend in school. What’s the bet that one in seven people are in schools where no ban has been put in place on campus?

After I and other parents lobbied our school for change, the school introduced lockable pouches in which phones must be stored throughout the school day – children return them to their arrival and collect them at the end of the day – and strict penalties for anyone who breaks the rules. . The results were extraordinary. Teachers reported feeling profoundly relieved, concentration at school improved, and parents noticed a reduction in smartphone use at home. A friend told me that her 15-year-old daughter’s mindset had completely changed since the ban and that her overall daily phone use had gone from more than an hour a day to less than 30 minutes.

It’s not just the immediate limits of the ban that matter, but also the messages we send to the next generation. Strict bans signal that excessive phone use is not normal. That’s what my friend’s daughter remembered. This is what my own children have understood, noticing that they no longer see phones on school grounds. And this is what children in schools where there is no ban will not understand.

The government says that between the new online safety law expected next year (requiring greater efforts from tech companies to protect young people) and the fact that schools already have the ability to ban themselves- even telephones, there is no need to legislate. But my own experience tells me that this is simply not the case. It’s actually very difficult for parents and schools to combat the deep-rooted feeling that phones are normal and unalterably ingrained in everyday life.

Before all of this, my children’s school technically banned the use of phones on site, but with caveats and no strict enforcement. Telephones were used during lessons. Despite the discouragement, we often saw them in the playground. When momentum built in March, we sent our manager numerous carefully crafted emails about the links between smartphone use and anxiety, loss of concentration, online stranger danger, and harassment , with dozens of informational links, pointing in particular to a study carried out by the non-profit organization. the research organization Sapiens Lab which unequivocally concluded that the younger a child is when they receive their first smartphone, the worse their mental health.

But it wasn’t easy. There were coffee mornings, investigations and tense discussions before the school reached any conclusions. Our school has also had to take into account a lot of things that I frankly didn’t anticipate, like how often older kids use their phones to check train schedules. To compensate, they had to reintroduce paper school timetables and access to training timetable notice boards in the school atrium. It took a lot of effort to bring about change. Without legislation, I fear many schools will not implement this change.

In the absence of government initiative, Labor MP John MacAlister this week introduced a private member’s bill aimed at banning smartphones in schools and introducing changes that would make doomscrolling much more difficult for schools. children by changing the ability of social media to provide them with addictive content. Some MPs, including Health Secretary Wes Streeting, agreed the debate was important. But in reality, backbench bills are very rarely successful. This all seems a bit weak and disappointing.

Meanwhile, other countries are getting ahead. Australia banned smartphones in its public schools last year and is currently developing legislation to ban children under 16 from accessing social media. New York Governor Kathy Hochul plans to introduce a bill banning smartphones in schools. And in France, the “digital break” is leading to a ban on all smartphones in 180 schools for children aged 11 to 15.

For a moment it looked like Britain was going to take the lead in all this. It now appears that we will be left behind.