Kids For Now

13/09/2026

Scotland:

🔉 Has your school asked your child and/or you to sign a Responsible Use Agreement for the use of digital technology?

❓Have you signed and returned it?
..If not, you don't need to!

💥 These agreements are meaningless and unlawful!

🎓 Schools and Councils have the responsibility for keeping children safe online. These policies frame the whole issue of online safety around misuse and attempt to shift the burden of responsibility onto the children, rather than them.

It's not fair and it's not legal.

They also attempt to use our children's education as a bargaining chip to get us to agree to their use of tech, often without specifying the details, opening the gateway to potentially harmful platforms. Their lack of clarity means we can't give informed and, therefore, legal consent.

❓Has your school shared its policy on the use of digital tech by children?
❓Has your school provided a full list of the platforms your child will be using?
❓Have they told you about the risks on each platform and how they will mitigate them?
❓Have they shared their data protection impact assessment?
❓Have they told you how much screen time your child will have at school and for homework each week?
❓Have they explained that you have the right to say no to the digital tech agreement
❓Have they guaranteed to provide your child's education whether you sign or not?

🔉 Even if you have signed the agreement you can still change your mind.

✍️ You can write to your headteacher and tell them that until they provide all of these things you do not give consent for your child to use digital tech at school.

Explain that they have a duty to provide your child's education and it is not conditional on a signature.

Tell them that the Responsible Use Agreement is unlawful.

If they haven't provided all of the above you can raise a formal complaint with your council's Data Protection Officer.

If you aren't satisfied with their response you can then raisecit with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and the Information Commissioner's Office.

Join forces at unplug.scot

11/09/2026

It's a tough time to be a young person.

Social media, mental health problems, the pandemic and financial instability all contribute to the phenomenon

07/09/2026

Its official! And it started right here!

Delaying smartphones improves childhood.

Author of the study noted that "while schools are now legally obligated to have a smartphone ban, this only restricts exposure to smartphones during school hours. He said there was no substantial mental health benefit from in-school phone bans alone."

“Coordinated ownership delay is a different policy,” he noted. “It changes the norm for when children first receive a smartphone, and it costs almost nothing to operate. The evidence here indicates that where communities adopt it intensively, children’s mental-health need falls.”

Parents who make a pact to delay giving their children smartphones until 14 improve the mental health of the group as a whole, a study has suggested

04/09/2026

*HONESTLY, WE COULD BURST 🥹✨*

Nearly 200,000 children are now part of the Smartphone Free Childhood Parent Pact – with families across the country choosing to delay smartphones together.

*And now, a completely independent study of the Pact, published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has produced the first causal evidence anywhere in the world that delaying smartphones improves children’s mental health.*

In schools where at least 1 in 5 families had signed, recorded mental-health needs were 8.2% lower – and the more families who joined, the stronger the effect became.

*This is huge.*

This all started with the Kids For Now Parent Pact at St Mary's Primary Scool in Largs - the blueprint for Smartphone Free Childhood. Well done to all the parents who have signed the pact. Lets keep going!

And we need your help to get this news into every school WhatsApp in the country._

*👉 Please forward this message to your class or school groups.*

Lots of parents want to delay smartphones but worry their child will be the only one. Let’s show them they’re not.

*👀 See how many families at your school are already choosing to wait*
https://parentpact.app.smartphonefreechildhood.org/

📰 Read the full story: https://www.thetimes.com/article/c707d28d-d613-4732-868c-5d6e7dd71c1b?shareToken=f9f3615a7be3eceb55ceb46369cf74ef

Sign the Smartphone Free Childhood Parent Pact: families choosing to wait on smartphones and social media, together.

04/09/2026

09/08/2026

Sweden is officially reversing its use of digital technologies in education to bring back handwriting and books. 🇸🇪📚

Reports say Sweden is pivoting away from a digital-first approach in schools after experiencing declines in reading comprehension scores. Educators noted that screens fragmented attention spans and weakened foundational skills. Consequently, the nation decided to phase out digital tools for children under six and reinvest significantly in physical textbooks to improve memory, language processing, and student learning outcomes.



References:
Stockholm Herald: Sweden Reverses Course by Replacing Classroom Screens With Traditional Books
Nordic School Review: Why European Educators Are Phasing Out Digital Tools for Early Learners
Global Education Insights: Tactile Learning and Paper Textbooks Make a Major Comeback in Swedish Schools

04/07/2026

Schools should not post images of children on social media and should not rely on social media platforms for their communications with parents.

Its not good enough to simply ask parents consent. The culture of constantly sharing everything children do publicly on commercial platforms sets a poor example, contradicts safety advice and normalizes social media for children from an early age. Its a terrible practice that must stop.

We've been saying this for years. Schools have not listened. Will they start to take notice now?

Exclusive: National Crime Agency and safety watchdog issue guidance amid rise in explicit material online

02/07/2026

Go Super Nova!

Presenting on EdTech to Senior Policymakers at the Department for Education Delighted to be invited back to discuss the growing adoption of one-to-one devices in schools and what this means for teaching and learning. We now have more than two decades of research showing that screens are a cognitivel...

30/06/2026

As parents, what message do we send to children when we lock in on our screens? Bitesize Parenting investigates.

16/06/2026

What IS Smartphone Free Childhood?

Channel 4 News 15 June 2026 - On the Day Sir Kier Starmer announced...