What’s on offer?

As the UK Government has advised schools to restrict students’ smartphone use, schools around the country scramble to find the most effective policies for them. But how do we know what is the best way forward? And what would work best in your school?

The Digital Futures for Children (DFC) centre at LSE invites teachers to a workshop to learn what the evidence says and to explore how such policies can best be designed from a child rights perspective.

Come and share your experiences and learn from others!

Open to: secondary school teachers working at state schools and teachers in training

Event booking details: this in-person workshop is free but pre-registration is required and is first-come first serve, as places are limited.

Expenses: Reasonable travel expenses can be reimbursed. For details email K.G.Ringmar-Sylwander@lse.ac.uk

What’s it about?

With the rapid expansion of social media and other attention-demanding products, concerns are growing that children’s mobile access at school (and elsewhere) undermines their academic learning, along with their mental health, social relationships and personal safety. Recently, one in seven countries have introduced policies to limit or prevent pupil access to smartphones at school, and more are debating such policies. Daily media reports show the number of school’s adopting increasingly restrictive mobile policies is steadily growing in the UK and abroad.

In response to this, the DFC published a report synthesising the available evidence entitled: “Smartphone policies in schools: what does the evidence say?” and designed this workshop to collaborate with teachers. 

We invite teachers to:

• learn about what the evidence says and what lessons we can drawn;
• workshop designing child rights-based smartphone policies which address the needs at their schools.

The workshop is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2024 - Our Digital Lives.

Workshop facilitators

• Professor Sonia Livingstone, professor in the Department of Media and Communications and director of the DFC
• Dr Kim R. Sylwander, Post-doctoral Researcher at the DFC
• Dr Mariya Stoilova, Post-doctoral Researcher at Department of Media and Communications and Manager of the DFC

Finding the location: Centre Building (CBG), London School of Economics and Political Sceince (LSE)

Campus map, Travelling to LSE

About the DFC

The Digital Futures for Children (DFC) is joint LSE and 5Rights centre facilitating research for a rights-respecting digital world for children. The DFC supports an evidence base for advocacy, facilitates dialogue between academics and policymakers, and amplifies children’s voices, following the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General comment No. 25.