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With many schools banning mobile phones, parents are now considering smartwatches as an alternative as a way to communicate with their kids.

The Victorian  and NSW governments have already implemented a blanket ban on smartphones in schools from this year and other states are expected to follow.

However, not all parents are happy about the new restriction and are turning to other ways to communicate with their kids during school hours.

A recent study found that the majority of parents are happy for their children to access smart devices as long as there is parental control over the technology and it is safe.

Parents Want Contact

More than half of the parents surveyed (52 per cent) say it is important to be able to contact their child while they are at school;
16 per cent try to message their child almost daily while they are at school;
and more than half (58 per cent) would use a phone or text feature to contact their child directly at least once a day if they could.

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 The top three reasons parents contact their child are to:

confirm they are safe,
tell them about a change of plans,
or to get an update on how their day is going.

If phones are going to be banned, parents are looking at smartwatches as a way to communicate with their kids.

Why Watches?

Almost three in four (72 per cent) parents believe children should be allowed to wear smartwatches in school, according to the survey of 1,000 parents of primary-school age children.

Conducted on behalf of wearables company SPACETALK, the survey gauges parents’ (of 5 to 12-year-old children) responses to school technology bans by education departments across the country.

Mark Fortunatow, Chief Executive Officer of SPACETALK’s parent company MGM Wireless, said that the report revealed legitimate concerns about a parent’s ability to get in touch with their younger children while they are away from home.

“The feedback we get from educators and caregivers is that children’s safety is of paramount concern, but issues such as online bullying can be difficult to spot and even trickier to manage in the age of connected devices,” Mr Fortunatow said.

Cyberbullying an invisible threat in schools

Parents’ biggest worries regarding access to smart devices include the inability to control issues such as online bullying and access to the child’s private data. The report found that the top three concerns parents have when it comes to using a smart device are: online bullying and non-desirable people accessing their child; physical bullying; and sharing of inappropriate texts and pictures.

Parents and caregivers ranked Facebook as the worst social media enabler of childhood bullying (74 per cent), followed by Snapchat (55 per cent), Instagram (50 per cent) and TikTok (30 per cent).

The advantages of smartwatches like SPACETALK is that it doesn’t need a separate smartphone to operate and doesn’t give children access to social media and the internet, which the data shows are among parents’ greatest concerns. It notifies a parent instantly if there’s anything wrong but doesn’t open the child to other, more unsavoury interactions.

The device has a ‘School Mode’ that allows parents to remotely disable any or all smart features during school hours. Parents control the device via the AllMyTribe guardian app to set up safe zones and contact lists and receive a variety of alert notifications.

The survey of 1,027 Australian parents and caregivers of children in primary school was conducted by Lightspeed Research for MGM Wireless.

Do you support the banning of mobile phones in schools? Would you buy a smartwatch for your child? Tell us in the comments below.

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  • I support the ban and my daughter has a watch in preference to a phone and I still don’t allow that at school

    Reply

  • I do support the ban on mobiles at school. They aren’t necessary! They could get lost, stolen or damaged. My kids and I survived their school years with no mobiles. Wth a smart watch, at least they are a little harder to lose as they’re attached to their wrists

    Reply

  • I agree on phones being banned in school, do primary school kids really need a mobile phone, this also poses the risk of it being stolen as most school bags are kept outside the classroom of a day.
    Parents are definitely finding a way around it, I wonder if smartwatches will be banned soon.
    I am so glad the smartphones were around when I was at school.

    Reply

  • Unless there is a legitimate reason I agree that mobile phones should be banned from school. If the parents need to get in touch with their children they should call the school’s office and pass on the message. The banning of mobile phones at school should also include teachers mobiles.

    Reply

  • Loopholes. Gotta love loopholes! I’d get my kids one of the watches that has the GPS tracking but aside from that if they are at school I don’t need to call them any more than they need to call me! We ALL survived our childhoods phone free so no idea why the following generations can’t do the same

    Reply

  • ABSOLUTELY!! Having had a child complete primary and secondary schooling I saw first-hand the damage that phones did to the school environment – from distraction in class, to bullying, to lack of interest in learning and the list goes on. Parents are setting themselves up for further pain as they realise their children are not learning in the way they should. I am so sorry for teachers who have had to deal with this. Parents need to get a grip. There is NOTHING that is so urgent that you need to contact your child directly during student time. And you’re not helping them or teaching them to wait. Parents are a big part of the problem.

    Reply

  • Some exceptions could be done for people like Ellen’s daughter or the mother of the boy with Aspergers. Beside that, I think it’s better not to have phones at school.

    Reply

  • I like the ban of the phone in schools but understand people worry about safety. If you need to tell you child a change call the school like our parents had to do. If they are out of your care after or before school, then take their phone and hand it in to the office and collect after school is done. Most of us have a restriction on our mobile phone use at work so I’m sure our kids will be able to do it too

    Reply

  • I consider a smart watch for my 9yr old, she has a Reactive Attachment Disorder and has several times run away last year and gone missing. I would like a smart watch with a gps tracker build in

    Reply

  • I don’t know why parents would have to contact kids at school
    I think the ban is good

    Reply

  • I dont know why a parents needs to contact the child at school. I think the phobe ban is fine and those watches sound to fancy lol

    Reply

  • I considered a smart watch for my son, he has Aspergers and copes better if he is able to communicate occasionally and I’m also able to talk him down when he says that he’s feeling overwhelmed and has recognized a panic attack beginning. Unfortunately our school has said that the cellular capabilities must be turn off from the watches as well though.

    Reply

  • Good idea

    Reply

  • I’ve got real concerns about little kids and mobiles – this old be a good compromise for many.

    Reply

  • I don’t know who’s worse with needing to use a mobile all the time, the parents or the kids! How did the parent’s parents contact them when they were at school? Mine, either never or via the office. I don’t see a problem with the ban but I see so many flaws in the way our school has done it

    Reply

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