Quelle surprise indeed. A London sixth form college has managed to boost its A-level results by an entire grade simply by banning mobile phones—and in doing so, it has inadvertently proven what many of us have been saying all along: giving children smartphones is not just misguided parenting, it’s borderline abuse.
Excelsior School in London introduced a mobile phone ban across its sixth form, and according to its headmaster, Omar Deria, the results were nothing short of “miraculous.” The students, he says, have become “nicer”, more articulate, and far more engaged with both their learning and their peers.
“Banning mobile phones in the sixth form has been a game changer for our students,” Mr Deria said. “You are dealing with completely different people. Their personalities are different. They are flourishing in a way I haven’t seen before.”
Let’s pause for a moment. “Miraculous”? No. Entirely predictable, surely. Anyone with half a brain could have told you that young people perform better and behave more sociably when they aren’t glued to TikTok, Snapchat, or whatever the latest dopamine trap is. Removing constant distractions allows for focus. Who knew?
What’s more, they become aware of the world around them. They begin to inhabit their environment rather than respond to external, algorithmically-curated stimuli. This isn’t complicated neuroscience—it’s common sense. But in the age of phone addiction, common sense has become rare.
The psychological consequences of smartphone overuse are now so well-documented that we’re almost fatigued by the evidence. Yet still, we hand over these glowing rectangles to children—children—and act surprised when their attention spans collapse, their empathy dwindles, and their academic performance plummets.
Jonathan Haidt, one of the most clear-eyed voices on this issue, has been warning for years about the devastating effects of social media on adolescent development. The question now is not whether phones are harming children—it’s what we’re prepared to do about it.
At a minimum, mobile phones should be banned in all schools. Not “limited”, not “monitored”—banned. And spare me the “but what if there’s an emergency?” argument. We coped perfectly well without phones in school for decades.
Of course, students are now gaming the system. Many carry two phones—one decoy for confiscation and another hidden elsewhere on their person. Still, even a strict ban sends a message. It changes the culture. It reasserts adult authority over young people’s digital lives, which have far too often been allowed to spiral ungoverned.
But schools are only part of the picture. The real battleground is in the home. In France, five major medical associations—including paediatricians and psychiatrists—have issued a joint call for under-sixes to be kept away from screens altogether. No screens. No tablets. No phones. Not even the so-called “educational” ones.
Their open letter is chilling: “Screens in whatever form… hinder and alter the construction of the brain.” Read that again. We’re not talking about mild developmental delays—we’re talking about altering the construction of the brain. And yet, parents continue to stick screens in front of their toddlers in prams and at restaurant tables as though they were dummies.
There was a time when giving a child a cigarette would be unthinkable. Today, giving them an iPad as a babysitter is unremarkable. And it is just as damaging—if not worse. Puffing smoke in a child’s face would probably do less long-term harm than feeding their developing brain a steady diet of flickering screens.
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It is high time society stood up to this madness. If we can ban smacking in Scotland, why can’t we ban children under six from accessing screens? Why can’t we launch nationwide campaigns warning of the neurological damage done by screens, in the same way we’ve plastered cigarette packets with images of diseased lungs?
Perhaps Elon Musk or another Silicon Valley giant could lend a hand in a campaign to prevent the very addictions their platforms have fuelled. Though many tech executives, tellingly, enforce strict no-device policies in their own homes.
This is not simply a matter of education policy—it’s a social, moral, and class issue. Because, as ever, the better-off are shielding their children from the very technologies they are selling to everyone else.
So, next time you see a toddler being placated with a phone on a bus, do society a favour: give the parent a long, silent Paddington-style stare. We may not be able to ban phones in every home, but we can make neglectful tech-parenting culturally unacceptable.
Because now we know: the damage isn’t just anecdotal—it’s measurable. And a London school has just proved it.
