One of the best actions to protect young people’s mental health (Editorial, 22 September) is to ban mobile phones in schools. Progressive schools have already done so, recognising the relentless impact that social media and screen time have on the emotional and mental health of their students. Their position is that it gives children six hours of screen-free, and social media-free time, which is desperately needed in an over-saturated digital world. The reason why this is not much more widespread is because such devices help schools control their students. As we have all known since the age of television, electronic devices make great babysitters. 2,000 pupils staring at their phones in lunch breaks are much easier to control than 2,000 who are not. But schools need to wake up to the impact they are having on children, and if not, it needs to be taken up by the Department for Education as a crisis in our schools.

Shannon Turner

Radstock, Somerset

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