Our story
Campaigning in partnership with the Smartphone Free Childhood movement, we're a coalition of parents, doctors and heads with a common mission: to make all schools smartphone free.
The UK’s Online Safety Act was heralded as a way of protecting children from extreme content, but as soon as it came into force in July 2025, downloads of VPNs surged. Very quickly children had found ways to circumvent restrictions and the internet remains unsafe.
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In the absence of adequate online restrictions, neither schools nor parents can be certain their children won’t access harmful or upsetting material, make contact with strangers, or experience online bullying via mobile internet connection.
At school the government has handed responsibility for dealing with this unprecedented threat to individual headteachers who are already over-stretched and under-resourced.
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Meanwhile at home it is very difficult for parents to delay giving their children smartphones when their peers are allowed to take them to school.
Through the grassroots campaigning we’ve done for Smartphone Free Childhood we have seen how quickly change happens when schools remove smartphones from the school day at the same time.
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Collective action by schools empowers parents to delay giving their children smartphones and gives those children who already have one a break from the distraction and harms of unrestricted internet access and addictive-by-design technology.
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That’s why we’re now campaigning for all schools in the UK to be smartphone free.