We are the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, or ACAMH for short. And this is ACAMH Learn. Welcome to Mind the Kids. I'm Dr. Jane Gilmour, honorary consultant, clinical psychologist, and Child Development Programme Director at UCL. And I'm Umar Toseeb, Professor of Psychology at the University of York, focusing on children and young people's mental health and special educational needs. In each episode, we select a topic from the research literature and, in conversation with invited authors, sift through data, dilemmas, and debates to leave you with our takeaways. Today, we'll be discussing smartphones in educational settings. And this episode asks, how smart is a phone ban? [MUSIC PLAYING] So this might well be the topic of our time. I think everyone is talking about smartphones and social media, and they have been doing for a number of years. And every time I speak-- I meet a lot of new people all the time, and also friends, et cetera. And every time I speak to anyone and I tell them what I do, they're like, oh, actually, smartphones, social media, parents that I meet, random people that I meet in a coffee shop, at the airport, whatever it is, lots of people that I talk to are convinced that smartphones and social media are having a negative impact on children's development and on children. And on the one hand, I can see why they would think that. But on the other hand, I'm not sure that the evidence is there. Yeah, and it is. As you say, it's the conversation of our age. And I have a bit of a theory, which I might have talked about before, about a new technology fear. So you could almost insert video games or video nasties into this place, where smartphones or social media are sitting right now, and the conversation would be the same. Although, I have to say, there are some important differences about social media and smartphone engagement that are not around with other new technologies. But I think there is an element of that, and I like to be optimistic about new technology. But one of my personal concerns about phone use is that I'm a great believer into staring into space. So, essentially, it puts you into that default mode, network's brain state, like being on a screensaver, essentially. So you're daydreaming, you're not engaged in the external world, and it's a really important part of cognitive experience. But every time you engage with your phone, you're required to look at the external world. So it's robbing you of that internal world. And when we're in that internal world, we're making sense of past events or developing our self-concept, visualising the future. And so you can see why it's so important for developing brains to have that thousand-yard stare, if you like, which I think phones interrupt. So that's one of the aspects. I also don't know how often, Umar, have you looked at your phone pick-up number on your phone settings. Have you ever done it? I do sometimes, and it's not nice viewing at all. Toe curling. Oh. Yeah. Because they're so handy. I think if mobile phones were uncomfortable to hold, we wouldn't have this problem because we use it as a kind of social crutch. We check it to see if alert has come, an alert hasn't come. Some people use it to manage their anxiety. You can see it in a conversation. And so there is so much in just the presence of a phone that I think is complicated. And we haven't even got close to safeguarding the content of it yet. So think there's a lot here. And this is, yeah, one of the many reasons we need an expert. There's two things you said, I want to pick up on there. The first one is around when you're not on your phone. So you said you talked about a default mode, where you're just daydreaming and looking into the sky. And I think that I've been thinking about the proposed social media ban in under-16's in England. And I think there's a misconception, or people are slightly delusional about what children are going to be doing when they're not on their phone. And I don't know. Do we think that people, children, are going to be spending that time more productively? Because you do need that downtime. You just need some time where you're doing nothing. And I think that people think, oh, well, they're going to spend more time playing outside or they're going to spend more time doing their homework. They're going to spend more time with their family or friends. And, actually, I don't think that's-- for some of them, they might. Or for some part of it, they might. But other parts, they might just be staring into space or just absolutely doing nothing. Yeah. Or they might end up just spending more time watching TV instead. Yeah, which seems more wholesome these days, doesn't it? A jolly good film, as you know, it's like organic. But I think that's interesting because, also, the other thing that we might get onto when we have our discussion is that a lot of-- well, if it's age appropriate, a lot of engagement in social media is really creative. And young people, they're essentially making little bits of content, which is thinking about film, thinking about engaging audience, how to structure an argument and so on. They're actually doing lots of interesting things when they are engaging with social media. So it may be that, as you say, they may be staring to space, which, as you know, I'm all for. But it could be that they are-- it will be interesting to see what happens if it does occur. I suspect what will happen is it will get very interesting to get onto social media. And so that might be-- the outcome of the spare time might be about sourcing VPNs or whatever they're called and so on. But who knows? I think that's a big question. It's not a given, that time taken from the phone equals time spent in a positive way. I think I want to coin a term. And I'm sure a phrase already exists for this. And, again, it's picking up on something you said, but it was something that I was going to say anyway, which is, I would call it the n equals one problem, is where people say, oh, well, when I use social media, or when I do this, or whatever, and then this other thing happens, and then based on that, they make inferences about this happening to children, and just other people, and the general population. But, actually, you can't generalise based on your own-- just one person's experience because n equals one is not a good sample size for generalisation. But I think that is what I see. And I do it as well because what I was going to say was, when I spend so much time on my phone-- yesterday, I spent a lot of time on my phone. I'm tempted to pick it up and have a look at my screen time. And by the end of the evening, when I was ready to go to bed, I was like, I just feel a bit sick and a bit angry. And it's because I spent all day on my phone scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, replying to stuff, doing whatever. And, actually, now I'm just annoyed. But actually, that's not-- that doesn't say much about the rest of the population. It might do when you put it together with other people, but my experience is not everyone else's experience. But I think that's-- and, actually, there's emerging data, isn't there, about the intraindividual differences about social media experience. So the same young person or adult, or the same Umar, could have the same-- could have very different experiences by looking at the same social media content, depending on your level of tiredness, your mood in the last-- previous week and so on. So I think there are those groups, aren't there, within the community samples, let's say, who experience social media, let's say, if we're talking about that, or technology in one way, but even within that community sample. And I think it's true to say-- and our expert, Lisa, may well correct me on this. But I think it's true to say that the majority of young people in the community feel more positive after they've had a reasonable amount of time on social media than not. Now, there are lots of groups within that who are highly vulnerable and who we need to protect as a community and as a society. But, generally speaking, social media use for young people, as long as it's appropriate and moderate, is a good experience. And there is that review, isn't there, the Goldilocks amount of data. Now, I'm just trying to remember who that was. I think that was Przybylski and Weinstein, I think it was, or Weinstein. I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce it, but they talked about the Goldilocks spot. I also think there's a developmental issue as well. So I wonder if young Umar would have a different experience to older Umar. Not old Umar. I would never say that. [CHUCKLES] Particularly as I'm much older than you. But, anyway, the point is, I think if we think about young people using phones, prepubertal young children, I think it's very hard to argue that they need access to a phone in primary school. Their experiences have got to be 3D, sensory, and motor, and so on. Although, Pete Etchells told us, described a stat, that about 25% of five to seven-year-olds have access to a smartphone, which is terrifying. But for teenagers, it's more complicated because of that social connection because we all have our phone. Everybody feels a little bit exposed without a phone in our hand, I think. I think this is so habitual, you look-- if you leave the house without your phone, it's an extraordinary event. And that says something about our social connection to it. But for teenagers, the phones stand for the curation of our life. But it's much more important for teenagers. Who's on the WhatsApp group? And it's a sort of metric of your integration into your peer group. How many likes have you got? How quickly did that person get back to you? Until the two ticks of the WhatsApp group is-- the WhatsApp messages has gone green. So there's a really important pull towards a phone, I think, is particularly important for teenagers. And I think having a phone around a teenager, whether it's at home or at school, is a really difficult experience for them if you're asking them to ignore that. It's like asking a chronically thirsty person to ignore that beautiful fountain tinkling away in the background. I think it's too big an ask because of that pull towards everything that it stands for that is so important to a young person, yeah. I've talked myself into a very difficult-- I'm thinking-- although, I'm trying to be optimistic about technology as I'm speaking, it does make me-- the concerns about these technologies are clear. Shall we bring in the guest? I think we need some help. Today, we're joined by Professor Lisa Henderson from the University of York. Lisa is the senior author of two papers in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Journal. The first one is "Digital Safeguarding Incidents in Schools With and Without Smartphone Policies, A Cross-Sectional Study in England," and the second one is "Innovations in Practise, a Pilot Randomised Trial on Smartphone and Social Media Abstinence, Effects on Sleep Quality, and Psychological Well-Being in Adolescents." Welcome, Lisa. Thank you. It's great to be here. We're so lucky to have you, particularly at this moment because we are recording this episode shortly after the UK has indicated they will ban social media in the under 16s. Now, one of the things we need to do is pull apart smartphone use and social media use. But let's think for a moment about that social media ban. What's your reaction to it? I've been trying to avoid this question, actually. My feelings are quite mixed, actually. I absolutely support the ban inasmuch as we need to do more, I think, to protect under 16s from the harms of social media, the around-the-clock access to the digital world that you've just been talking about. And, generally, we need to do more to acknowledge these risks, help parents make the changes that they want to make. Ultimately, though, I think improving platform safety and accountability for all of us, not just younger people, is a better, longer term solution than relying solely on this ban. And I think that's probably where the dangers come in. Just before I kind of expand on that a little bit, I think it is really important to acknowledge that, at this point in time, we don't have all the details of the ban yet. We won't hear more until December 26. So it is difficult at the moment, I think, to hold a full opinion without having these details present. And I think the other thing to say is that we can't compare with Australia. So I think that there are some papers now in the BMJ, the [INAUDIBLE] study, suggesting that the ban in Australia is not working and that kids are still on social media platforms and happy to admit they are. I think what looks to be the case is that our social media ban in the UK will be a lot tougher. It will have stricter age verification and assurance and greater kind of legal accountability attached to it. And so we can't necessarily compare like for like or use that as a reason for why we shouldn't go here-- go there in the UK. I guess my opinion is that we have sufficient evidence that social media can negatively affect some young people's mental health, particularly when you're thinking about addictive algorithms, cyberbullying, unrealistic beauty standards. And you mentioned this at the start, but displacing other important activities, like exercise, like sleep, like looking each other in the whites of our eyes, face-to-face social interaction, reading books. I think that there is evidence that those things do get displaced. And when you take smartphones and social media away, that those things do, in fact, come back. So we have evidence from that in our pilot RCT. Children and adolescents, I think, are especially vulnerable because they're still developing emotionally, cognitively, socially. So I do believe it's completely necessary for the government to step in and ensure better protection. Where we're going to see bigger positives are for those younger generations coming through, the ones that aren't already on social media, I think. They'll need help with navigating the new normal, hopefully, in a safer digital world, hopefully, eventually, with new and safer platforms that will have to come online for them to use, in a way that they can reap the benefits that you've mentioned of social connection, educational resources, et cetera, participation in communities, where they can find people with shared interests, but without the threats. So that's the dream, isn't it? So I think the focus should be on creating these safer platforms so they're safer by design, longer age verification, definitely, but also removal of harmful content, limiting those addictive design features. As I've hinted at, I think the bigger risks around the ban, the bigger negatives come for the-- I think we can call them the Lost Generation. I think those kids, like my own two sons, actually, they're already using existing social media platforms. For them, there may be unintended consequences of coming off social media, particularly abruptly, driving them underground, where there's heightened risk. They might be less likely to report things like cyberbullying cause they think they're going to get in trouble for using the platforms. Their digital literacy might be affected. Their awareness of what's going on in the world might be affected because I think social media is a primary means, particularly from my son's perspective. My 14-year-old, it's the way he finds out what's going on in the world around him. So I think we have to be really aware and wary of this Lost Generation, who have grown up being told that social media is a good thing in the pandemic. And now they've being told it's a bad thing. So we mustn't forget them, their health, their rights, actually, as well. But as you're talking about your sons, I think this is a very generous way of giving us that example because, actually, knowing what a young person's digital experience is and being alongside that is actually one of the most important things. And you mentioned, perhaps, young people don't say, oh, I had a problem here because I was on a platform I'm not allowed to be on. Actually, we want them to be able to share that with us, and for that to be a positive experience to share that moment because it's a real privilege to get into a young person's experience because it is so personal. It's them and the phone. And parents really have to muscle in on that relationship. But they have to do that. Otherwise, they're negotiating that by themselves, which is impossible, as well as all those different messaging, as you say, going around society. It's just, yeah, extraordinary. The two things I just want to pick up on there is the first one is one of the things I like about this podcast is I'll often make sweeping claims at some point and then a guest will correct me, which I think is great that it's happened today because, yeah, at the beginning, I was talking about the displacement hypothesis. And I was like, yeah, but we don't know that they're going to be doing positive things with their spare time. And Lisa's come back and corrected me, which is that there is evidence that is what people-- young people do, is that when they're not on smartphones and there is abstinence, then they are doing more of these other things that they wouldn't otherwise be doing, which I think is really nice. And it's really nice that there's some data to back that up. And the second one is lots of people might see a ban for under 16's as, well, now it's banned and that's the end of it. But what you've described, Lisa, is actually the ban being a vehicle for a better social media world and platforms for those young people. So I suppose it's thinking about it differently, as in, this is not necessarily the end of under-16's on social media. This might be the intermediary step that then leads to a more positive social media experience and social media platforms that aren't as addictive, that minimise or reduce massively lots of the risks that are associated with social media use or potentially associated with social media use. And I think that's a really nice way to look at it because then this is not necessarily the end of social media for under 16's. I think we have to use this to facilitate further change, that it can't be viewed as the panacea, really. We have to be addressing the issues with the platforms and the addictive features. We have to be kind of continuing to make our children digitally literate and prepare them for the world when they enter it. And just, it's unrealistic to think that it's the end of social media for under 16's. I think that's a more realistic way of looking at it. In terms of the first point around evidence of displaced activities kind of coming back when you take smartphones, social media away, so it's something that we want to look at more detail in a larger scale trial. But in our pilot trial, we used Garmin watches to monitor things like sleep and physical activity objectively. And, of course, we also questioned children who had undergone either a total three-week restriction of business as usual with their smartphones and social media. We asked them how their mental health had changed, and we asked them about what kind of activities they were taking part in. So we did see with the wearables data that physical activity did increase during the three-week period. So that's really one really nice thing. And we did also see that sleep duration, reported sleep duration, did improve as well. The other really nice thing is that, actually, so we've mentioned social connectedness as a potential benefit of spending time online. But, actually, in-depth interviews with the kids that underwent our pilot restriction suggested that, actually, they were reporting better quality social connections on the school bus, for instance, when they're talking to their friends, but also at home as well with their family members. So it's not necessarily the case that online social interaction is always better or equivalent to that sort of offline real-world social interaction. And there's some good data suggesting that as well. That's really interesting because I wanted to know-- and you talked in your paper about noting caution because some of the-- or, at least, certainly, one sample that you described were self-selecting in their phone abstention. And I wondered if you knew anything about the sociometric status of these children who chose to take part. So were they socially neglected? Were they-- Absolutely. Yeah, thank you for that question. So this was in the paper, where we looked at school smartphone-- well, phone policies, and related them to digital safeguarding incidents or safeguarding incidents in general. We used freedom of information requests to gather that data. And we did as much as possible using stratified sampling methods to make sure that schools were what you'd expect in terms of national makeup, of socioeconomic status, and other things, like the gender proportion of kids in schools and regional locations. So they were sampled to represent England. And then we also checked with the schools that we then recruited, with the data that we had available, again, whether or not the schools were representative. The average free school meal's representation within the schools that we collected represent that-- reflected what you'd expect nationally. So it was around about 25%. So there was some evidence. That kind of whole sample level data was nationally representative. But with freedom of Information request data, it's not possible to go and get individual data for individual children on things like SES, or socioeconomic status. So that's one of the pitfalls of freedom of information data. In order to get that at that fine-grained level, you'd have to go through additional consent procedures, which then takes some of the strengths of that data acquisition process away. Just on the topic of schools, you mentioned schools. Let's start talking about schools. What is a digital safeguarding policy? Why do schools have them? What's contained within them? Yeah, so there's two things to separate here, really. We need to separate out kind of safeguarding policies and school policies, I think, is probably the useful thing to clarify. So if I can start with school policies, actually, because it makes more sense to go in that order. When we carried out this research, it wasn't mandatory for schools to have phone policies. But then in June 26, statutory guidance was released by the DFE under the Children's Well-Being and Schools Act. And this gave the government's school phone guidance legal force. So that means that, from the 1 of September, schools will be expected to be following guidance at the start of the next academic year. So this guidance is quite loose, though. It just kind of simply expects that state-funded schools will be mobile phone-free throughout the school day, including in lessons, in time between lessons, at lunch breaks, et cetera. But where the flexibility comes in is that schools will still have control over how they enforce this. So, for example, they can require phones to be handed in, stored in lockers or pouches, or not brought into sight at all. Or they can just simply request that children keep their phones in their bags and don't get them out. And, thankfully, there'll be exceptions made. So for children with particular medical needs-- that's one really important example-- so children with diabetes, for example, who need apps to be able to monitor their health critically throughout the day, so there's still room for flexibility there, and also at sixth form age as well. So we invited schools, obviously, to share their phone policies with us. And the major finding here was that their presence, or whether they had one, the policy that they were situated in, whether it was a separate phone policy or whether it was part of a behaviour or a safeguarding policy, which I'll come onto in a moment, was highly variable. The mandated policy now means that there'll be maybe slightly less variability in this because they will have to have one and it will have to be a separate standalone policy. But I think that the majority of schools will advise that children just leave their phones at home, but nevertheless allow them to keep them on their person in their bags. I think given the conversations that I've had with many secondary schools, that's the way that a lot of schools will go. And that still then risks variability and compliance, I think. And that will be the critical thing. And then the safeguarding. So safeguarding is an issue or any concern that might impact on a child or young person's safety or well-being, anything that might cause them harm or put them at risk of harm. And this is inside or outside of school. So that's important to clarify. So schools are legally required to document these harms and any incidents that they know about. And this is, again, DFE guidance in the Keeping Children Safe in Education documentation that was released in 2025, I think. So digital safeguarding risks are now incorporated into that. And they can include things like abuse, harassment, damaging messages, non-consensual sharing of images, or access to harmful content. But I think the extent to which schools are kind of developing policies around digital safeguarding incidents, in particular, is really unclear at the moment. One thing to say is that safeguarding incidents have dramatically risen since 2022, when we've got some longitudinal data available. And where we're seeing the biggest increases in safeguarding incidents are with very young children, but also with older adolescents. And this has largely been attributed to things like rising poverty, rising poor mental health, but also extra and familial factors, like online harms. So in a recent survey of local authorities, service providers, there was, I think, over 2/3 of the providers reported a significant increase in safeguarding demands as a result of online activity. So I think it's something that's becoming more present in these safeguarding reports. And I think I'm right in saying that you noted in one of your papers that it was much more common to have recorded a safeguarding issue where there was a mobile phone policy. Is that correct? That's right. Kind of backwards, isn't it? It's not really what we expected to see, to be honest. And it suggests that schools that are more data driven, are more policy driven, are also those that are more likely to report incidents. So, yeah, I think it suggested that-- I think the key finding from that study was really the fact that there was so much variability in what schools were reporting, and so much variability in whether they had a phone policy or not. But, yeah, it was certainly the case that schools that were more likely to report incidents were also those that were more likely to just have a policy, and it didn't matter what that policy was. I wonder, Lisa, so just before this, we talked about the social media ban. If and when that comes into force, what will this mean for safeguarding incidents of smartphone use in schools, et cetera, as in, there's more to smartphones than social media. So I wonder what will happen in schools? Because I suppose you've talked about them being phone-free environments. Is that going to be easier to implement without social media? It should be. It depends how people respond to the ban, doesn't it? I think if kids are off social media from year seven, so from 11, then they've got much less of a reason to bring their phones into school and much more of a reason, particularly for the younger ones coming through, for their parents to buy them a phone that doesn't have access to social media on it as their first phone. And some really nice examples of phones that are coming on the market that meet that demand, which is good. It depends what the reaction is, I think. I am concerned that, in terms of the implications for safeguarding reporting, we could see a downturn in digital safeguarding reporting incidents because, as I mentioned earlier, kids might be less likely to report things like cyberbullying or non-consensual sharing of images if they know that they shouldn't be on those platforms. So that's the concern, really, that some of these behaviours might be kind of driven underground. And you're sitting atop such valuable data here about-- that we can-- as Umar said, we're not taking a flyer and imagining if you have some data here that can really help us imagine and hypothesise with some information behind it. When I asked earlier about sociometric, not socioeconomic, I was wondering what the sociometric, in other words, what the social status of children was in terms of those who choose to abstain from their phone because I'm wondering if there is something about the degree to which, where you sit in your social group. For example, if you're excluded from the social group, you may have less to lose in inverted commas by giving up your phone. Whereas, if you are embedded in a social network that currently is defined by digital connections, the chances of surrendering your phone may be less. So I'm just wondering about-- because you know, given that your study, it was a self-selected study, do you know where those children sat in their social world? Or do you have any sense of that? Maybe you have a formal or an informal observation about that. Yeah, thank you. It's a brilliant question and something we're very, very aware of. So in the pilot study that we ran, we collected a lot of baseline data in terms of how much children were using their phones, how much time they were spending on social media, how much they valued it. So we did have all that data, and we did see a spread of kids. There were some kids that were using it problematically, so they were classed as kind of-- I don't like using this word because I don't think it's necessarily a formal addiction, but they were showing addictive or obsessive kind of tendencies on their phones. And we had other kids that didn't. So we did have that spread of initial engagement. I think when we were going into starting a bigger version of this trial, which Umar is also a co-I on, which is brilliant, we will be taking a collective approach to digital detox to try and get around this problem a little bit. So the idea is that we'll randomise conditions to whole year groups and encourage whole year group approach, including teachers as well as family members. So I think this kind of design can only work if it is collective and we're all in it together kind of thing. And another thing to point out in terms of the phone policy as well, really interestingly, some schools, their phone policy didn't just apply to the kids. It also applied to the teachers. So they explicitly said that teachers should not have phones out in the classroom, they shouldn't have them on their desks, and that teachers would be modelling those good behaviours. And I think, again, it's similar-- it's one of my kind of bugbears with the under 16 social media ban, that a lot of these principles should apply to all of us. They don't just apply to under 16's. And so getting those kind of modelled behaviours in the older-- in the parents, in the caregivers and the role models. I did a consultation with a progressive school, and we were talking about this very thing about modelling the behaviour. And I said, if you really believe that these young people will respond to modelled behaviour-- model behaviour, you want to see. That's always the bottom line. I said, why don't you ban mobile phones for the upper sixth and the sixth or years 12 and 13 and watch it trickle down? Because that actually might be an-- maybe it's not fair to experiment inverted commas on a school community. But in theory, that's far more powerful than showing slightly older teenagers walking around engaged in social media use because it immediately makes it an aspirational activity. It should be the other way around. High quality and high-value models should be doing the very behaviours that we are asking our young people to do. Yeah, absolutely. We see it in our own survey data that's not yet published, under review. But one predictor of how much children use their smartphones is how much they perceive their parents to be using their smartphones. There's some really nice work coming out in the early years as well that, hopefully, will turn into good longitudinal studies that will be able to demonstrate how preschoolers observing their parents spending time on their phones in front of them drive them into wanting to model those kind of behaviours themselves on pretend phones and iPad time. So, yeah, I think we've all got a role to play in this. One of the concerns that I have with the under 16 social media ban is the level of responsibility that parents are willing to take for ensuring that their kids are not just using their phone to go on YouTube or their social media because Instagram, for example, is about seeing other people's pictures and other things. But part of it is just going on the reels and scrolling. And you don't need your own account to do that. You can just go on someone else's. Is there going to be a problem with some parents just not being able to take more responsibility in enforcing that? Because that's when it falls apart. Because you ban it for under 16's to not be able to go on social media, sign up, but then they just use their parents anyway. Yeah, I think it is a risk. And YouTube is another one that's very easy to have a YouTube account on your TV, isn't it, that kids will still have access to. I think we can draw analogies here. So this is a public health campaign, in a way. And the ban isn't about removing all risk, I suppose. It's about kind of noting the harms and trying to mitigate that risk, recognising that children require greater protection than adults. And it's also about making it socially unacceptable to allow children to overuse social media, just like it's socially unacceptable to allow your child to become addicted to cigarettes. So I think we can use analogies with alcohol consumption and smoking in under 16's here, in that we don't necessarily expect that this ban is going to work across the board. But, nevertheless, it should lead to a societal shift in perception, nevertheless, and still be worthwhile. But there will be certain kind of vulnerability groups, I think, that are still going to be at relatively more risk than others. I think it's kind of what Keir Starmer and the ex-Prime Minister said, as in, just because some people will-- I don't know. I think he used the example of alcohol, or smoking, or something, like just because it's illegal doesn't mean everyone will adhere to it. There will still be some people who do it. But, actually, it's against the law and it's socially unacceptable. I think there's a concern-- I think you mentioned this, Umar-- about a false sense of security among parents. I think that is really important. I don't know whether you meant this or not. But I think it's still an important point to mention it, so I'll mention it anyway. We don't want parents to believe that the legal ban has kind of solved all the problems, I think. We don't want them to pay less attention to their children's online behaviours. I think this relates to the fact as well that teens are a lot more tech savvy than we are, VPNs, borrowed accounts, less regulated platforms. They all become really exciting possibilities. So I think, yeah, there is a piece around acknowledging that this isn't the panacea and that we shouldn't be lured into a false sense of security that this is going to work. We still need that kind of parental input to be able-- for it to work. I think it's really interesting the way that, as you're saying, about laws changing social perception because it does shift societal ideas. Wearing a seat belt, for example, is completely-- it's very unusual to do anything other than that. And that's a fairly-- I don't know how old the legislation is, but it's within my living memory. But before that, an older generation might find it-- might have found that step change rather different. But the point is that the messaging of the law to society is important. But there is that missing piece. And I think the idea of giving parents a false sense of security is important because it's as if well, that's that job done. It's illegal. We need to-- just, we can relax now. So those platforms need to be regulated for us all. And so the next move is for society to be asking those questions of the content in general and seeing them as publishers, perhaps, rather than conduits, which I think is always the argument, isn't it, that they are responsible for the content that they offer everyone. And that will be a really interesting and important part of that puzzle because, as you say, I think parents need to get in amongst this and get their hands dirty. In the same way as all other parenting jobs, this can't be outsourced. But it's part of this. I just want to pick up on your false sense of security for parents point, and I just want to broaden that a bit. So often on this podcast, we talk about there being multiple influences on young people's development, each with a small effect size. And I wonder whether there's a false sense of security amongst parents, teachers, society, policymakers, that the social media ban for under 16's will solve the mental health crisis. And, realistically, it's not going to. Even if your trial, Lisa, or other trials show that there's an improvement in overall mental health, I'd be surprised if, in two years' time, we no longer had a mental health crisis. There's still going to be a crisis. And I think that then we should-- I don't think anybody in this conversation has alluded to that. But I think, wider society, there might be some misconceptions that this is going to be the answer to the mental health crisis, and it's not. This might help a bit. There's lots of other things that need to be done. No, and, really, that's what the evidence is telling us, that, overall, there are small effects. We're working with small effects here. And those effects get bigger for certain populations. So individuals that are kind of already heavy users, shown problematic, are addictive type tendencies. There are stronger effects on things like sleep and mental health. Individuals with underlying mental health conditions already are at greater risk. Individuals with neurodiversities, like autism and ADHD, may be at greater risk. So there are pockets where the effects on mental health are larger. But still, those effects are, overall, quite moderate. So it's a bit like with the school ban policies. There's very dubious evidence that we're going to see direct effects on mental health there because it's partly-- also, it's not fully solving the problem, that there are other issues around things like late night use, displacement of sleep, the fact that these problematic behaviours often occur outside of school anyway, that dilute any effects that we might see on mental health. Well, Lisa, is it fair to say that sleep is a mechanism of change or mechanism of improvement rather than lack of phone access? That's really interesting. Obviously, I've come at this area as a sleep scientist. So sleep as a mechanism of change has been a real focus for me rather than other mechanisms, of which there are many. So I don't think I should say that sleep is more important than others. I think what I can say is that sleep is an area where we have a stronger conversion of evidence of smartphone and social media harms. We did a recent longitudinal scoping review. The majority of studies do show downstream effects of social media on some aspect of subsequent sleep, again, particularly for problematic types of social media behaviours. And we're also starting to see causal evidence, that if you take smartphones away in adults and kids, then you're going to see improvements in things like sleep. So we see indirect effects on sleep, but we also think that sleep is going to play an important mediatory role as well. So sleep and mental health are strongly and bidirectionally intertwined. And so anything that plays havoc with sleep is going to put mental health at risk and vice versa. So we think that kind of sleep can be an important vehicle, not only for some of the impacts that we might see on mental health, but also the impacts that we might see on things like cognition and social attitudes. Maybe if I can just expand on what we think kind of what the mechanisms might be there. So we can think of smartphones, time on social media before bed, as being almost like a cultivation chamber, I think I've used to describe it before for things like repetitive negative thoughts, presleep arousal, prebed anxieties. And that can have knock-on effects for things like sleep duration, sleep onset, and shorten the amount of time you spend asleep and hampers sleep quality. But it can also lead to downward spirals because we know that sleep deprivation can really hampen your brain's ability for things like cognitive control and emotional regulation. And that, in turn, can have further effects on sleep deprivation itself, as well as mental health. So we think that this might be one mechanism at play here. But, also, if you're in a sleep-deprived state late at night, scrolling through social media, and you come across misdisinformation, harmful content, you might be less able to emotionally regulate yourself through that content. And you might be more likely to start kind of demonstrating addictive scrolling behaviours. And so I think it makes a lot of sense as to why sleep might be at the heart of some of these issues. But sleep is certainly not the only mechanism. And I think it's definitely questionable what kind of effect a school policy would have on sleep because I don't think it's tackling the issues that arise under conditions of sleep deprivation. So that would be a bit of a leap of faith. We do see that the majority of problematic behaviours take place outside of school. But it's so interesting because we really-- and I think neither Umar nor I were very familiar with the literature that focused on the connections with sleep and mental health. I think that-- well, that's certainly true for me, but we've commented on that on a number of occasions. It really does highlight the value of sleep. And it's another reason to look at the effects of tech. But as you say-- and it's a very measured consideration because I know you're an advocate for sleep. Of course you are. But considering that as being one mechanism, but certainly not all, so fascinating. We definitely need to do more to improve the nation's sleep than we are. We could do with another public health campaign around sleep. Definitely up for that. Oh, that's fantastic. Let's wrap it up there. Let's call it a day. So that's been a really helpful, insightful conversation, Lisa. And I hope it was helpful for you, as well as being useful for our listeners and me and Jane as well. Yeah, thank you so much. It's been really enjoyable. So as always, what a fascinating conversation. And very topical, very timely. And what an absolute privilege to have an expert and one of the leading experts on this topic. So I think everyone's got an opinion. I had an opinion at the beginning of this. And everyone you speak to has an opinion, but it's really nice to speak to someone who knows the science behind this and is doing the science on smartphones, social media use, and the impact on young people because then you get a really good understanding of what the evidence actually shows, what the data-- And, really, instead of guessing the data, as I said, Lisa's group is sitting atop the data. And it is going to change policy. And that's really where all academics would like to be. Changing public health policy will be an extraordinary and a likely outcome, I imagine, given the data that's being produced. So it's very exciting. So how did you-- because when I'm thinking about this, obviously, I'm thinking about it from a clinical point of view, and really thinking about working with teachers and educational professionals in schools. And I often have this question. We were talking about it in every sphere of life. But if I'm thinking about my clinical experience of how to support other professionals who are at the coalface of teenagers, usually, and their phones. And there's certainly three clear themes that come out of that discussion. And I think the first one is that phones stop you moving or sleeping. And those two things are very important. I think it's true to say that phones are cognitively distracting. And, in fact, I think there's quite strong data for that. And I think that's true to say. So there's a very nice meta analysis by Bochner and colleagues. And it describes working memory, sustained attention, and attainment being impaired when we use our phones or our phones are around just in the room. So I'm wondering about the phone in the bag policy. I'm not sure that that's enough because I think I've got my social world in my bag down there. And I'm really thinking about the alerts, the beeps, the vibrations, perhaps, if I've got my bag next to my leg. That matters. So think the bottom line is smartphones have no business being in an education space, don't belong. But they do perhaps belong in social spaces and that connection where things are much more complicated. But what Lisa's paper really made me think about-- and this is one of the reasons I was so delighted to have read it-- was that she's-- the data is talking about how to curate a policy which is data informed. But, also, they noted that policy alone is not enough. So policy is necessary, but not sufficient. We have to be the human beings implementing that and getting in amongst it in order to make the changes. And I think that's a really important point because Lisa talked about that idea of a young person not necessarily telling you what's going on in their digital world. And so whenever a young person tells you something that's going on, something that's worrying them on their phone, it has got to be praised. It's got to be a positive experience to share because, if not, it will go underground, especially-- that is especially true-- if they've been doing something that you've warned them against. It can come back to the boundary later. But that idea of the underground experiences, which are more pertinent, I suspect, if that social media ban goes in place because there will be a barrier to get across in terms of connecting with an adult to help you navigate that, whatever's going on. So it's really difficult. I did wonder, when Lisa was saying about the safeguarding incidents in schools, and that data will now-- because Lisa's paper looked at that cross-sectionally, in theory, you can get the same data from schools next year or the year after and see what happens to safeguarding incidents. And you would expect them to go down, but you don't know why they've gone down, whether the safeguarding incidents have stopped happening because people aren't online, or whether they've just stopped reporting them because they shouldn't be online. Exactly. And I think that's got to be the sort of, I'm glad you told me whatever you told me framework, if you like, for young people when they talk about it. And we can model that, almost like an amnesty, if you like. But tell me what's gone on, if there's something that's-- if you're concerned about your safety. And that will be so important because that's a cultural issue, whole school culture, a whole family culture about, we talk about the things that have happened. If you come forward and tell me, it will always be a good thing. You won't be punished for the lesser transgression, but you'll be praised for giving me the privilege to be alongside you to help figure that out. And that can be a school culture, as I say, as well as a family culture one. So, yeah, it's going to be really interesting to look at that data as they follow it up. Takeaways, so I actually have one that I've thought about. So we're talking to each other, I always struggle with this. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to take away, but I-- one, it's interesting how we've now come to a position as a country where we want a social media ban for under 16's. Well, the government does. And I think it's come from a position of, there is some evidence and it's emerging. There could be more evidence. But someone's taken a decision that the evidence that we have, although it might not be as extensive as we'd usually want it, it's enough to take action. And as an academic-- and other people, I imagine, can relate to this-- always struggle with, can my research have an impact on society? Is it ready? And a lot of the time-- I think there's a spectrum. And there are some people who are very like, no, no, it's not ready, it's not ready, it's not ready. It's not-- and, whereas, the other end of the spectrum, there are some people who are like, yes, my work is ready. And I think, for me, what this social media ban proposal demonstrates is that, actually, the science doesn't have to be completely perfect, completely advanced, completely at where you want it to be. There is a point where you as a society, or as a researcher, or the government, whoever it is, policymakers, decide that the evidence that we have is good enough and we're going to go with it. So I think the message, really, there is that you might not think that your research is ready to influence policy. But, actually, sometimes, the decision about policy needs to be made now. What research do we have? And what research do we have to help us make that decision? Because, sometimes, a policy window moves. So there's an appetite in government now. There's an appetite in the public right now. So whoever's doing social media, smartphone use-type research, whatever evidence you've got is what's going to be used. And in about five years' time, we may no longer be having this conversation. Five years ago or 10 years ago, we probably weren't having this conversation in policy spaces. The time is right. No, I think it's a point well made. That window of opportunity may shift, and it's important. I think from a clinical point of view-- I guess I have a policy observation as well, but also from a clinical point of view because I think it's something that Lisa touched on, which I think is so important because I think the messaging of a smartphone ban in particular spaces or a social media ban is important because we're seeing as a society that there are potential harms, which is an important signal for everybody. But I think, probably, the real impact will be how we culture our relationships with young people to keep those open communication channels about their phone use. And that way, we can help them engage with the digital world, become digitally literate so that they're safe and socially enriched. Yeah, it's a lot to do. Thanks, Jane. We're doing something new here at ACAMH. We've included in the description for this podcast a link to an online questionnaire, where you can give your feedback about this particular episode, what you've learned, and whether it helped you change anything that you do in your usual practise, those kinds of things. So we just want to encourage all you listeners to click on the link, and give us some feedback, and let us know what you think. Join us again next week. We'll be speaking to Baroness Ruth Lister, CBE, about social economic factors affecting mental health and how researchers can get their work into policy. [MUSIC PLAYING]