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A 17-year-old girl who says she was exposed to horrific images and videos including porn, a shooting and a beheading on a smartphones during the school day has joined a legal action against the education secretary.
Flossie McShea, from Devon, says she also received threatening messages while at school, as she put her name to a judicial review in an attempt to get smartphones banned in schools in England.
Will Orr-Ewing and Pete Montgomery first notified the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, in July that they would pursue legal action, arguing that current guidance, which allows headteachers to decide how smartphones are used, is unlawful and unsafe for children.
“Videos were going around all the time,” McShea recalls of her time at secondary school from year 7 onwards. “My parents were strict at home but at school people can airdrop you videos or show you their screen without invitation, to see your reaction.
“My school had a ‘see it, hear it, lose it’ policy, but in reality we just used them under the desk, in the toilets, during lunch break, in the playground, on the bus, even in the corridors. It was impossible for the teachers to stop us.
“The thing that affected me the most was a video of two young children playing with a gun. One shot the other accidentally and she died. We were getting off the bus and a friend came over to me with it on her phone. I had to go home early that day. I was so shocked I couldn’t sleep. I still think about that video three years later.
Katie Moore, 43, a mother-of-three from Northampton has also joined as a claimant after her 18-year-old daughter told her she had been shown “dick pics” in school changing rooms and anime porn in WhatsApp groups, and that a student had accessed Omegle, a video chatroom, in her year 9 form room, which exposed her to men who were masturbating.
“I only found this out years later – back when she was 13 she didn’t feel she could tell me because she didn’t want to get into trouble and she knew I’d take her phone away,” Moore said. “As a mum I can try my best to protect my children at home, yet they can go to school and be exposed to explicit harmful material on another student’s smartphone. Until smartphones are prohibited items, we have no reassurance that this sort of thing won’t happen to our children during the school day.”
Child protection specialist and former social worker Dr Ciarán Murphy is one of the witnesses in the case.
Lawyers representing the claimants say there is extensive evidence that smartphone policy recommended in the current government guidance, and implemented by 79% of secondary schools, does not work. They point to a range of serious safeguarding incidents that are commonplace throughout the school day and on the journey to and from school.
James Gardner of Conrathe Gardner LLP, acting for the claimants, said: “The government is well aware of the serious harms caused to children as a result of smartphones in school settings. They had a golden opportunity to put it right with a national ban when they issued safeguarding guidance this autumn – but they decided to ignore the problem once again. Bridget Phillipson is putting the nation’s children in harm’s way.”
