Mobile Phone Addiction

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (15:32): It is hard to argue that phones are not a distraction. Actually, I would argue they are much more than a distraction; they are an addiction. I am not above this addiction. I wake up and check my phone, and the last thing I do when I go to bed is check my phone. Concerningly, the hours I spend on my phone do not include the hours I spend on my laptop. Having a phone is part of my job, but it is a tool that has become an addiction. This could just be me, but as I look around the chamber, I do not think I am alone.

I have three children, which means I have three copycats. They are busy kids with a week full of gymnastics, hockey, netball and following mum around to community events, which they just love. Like mum, the first thing they want to reach for in the morning is a screen, and the last thing they are debating before we go to bed is, 'Where did you find that screen?'.

And I am not alone. Polling carried out by Censuswide in 2019 found children are spending an average of 23 hours, nearly an entire day a week, on smart phones and other gadgets, twice as much time as they spend conversing with family. The survey of 2,000 families with children below the age of 14 found that, on average, they were spending three hours and 18 minutes a day on personal devices.

From accessories personalising your phone to creating little emoji characters of yourself and your friends, the brains trust behind smart phones have created an addiction for the young and the old. According to research, mobile phone addiction works similarly to video game addiction. Every once in a while the user receives some sort of reward—a smiley face, a thumbs up, a message notification and more likes. Whenever we get rewards like this, dopamine in the brain is released. We feel very happy and desire more. We crave scrolling more to search for more rewards.

But imagine you are 10. You are at school and send a sneaky group text to your friends in maths. The student waits and waits and waits for a reply, but there is not one. They get anxious and they stop listening to their teacher. Time passes by and then the dreaded text pops up, an angry face. This is a situation teachers are facing. This student will now have trouble concentrating for the remainder of the day—they will be distracted. But what parents, teachers and carers are finding is the distraction does not stop at the school gate. The weight of sending a text and the anxiety of it being shared with 50-plus students will go home with them.

I have mentioned before in this chamber that, as of last year, there has been a generational shift in the Australian population. There are more Australians born post-1980 than before. As leaders, yes, we need to embrace new technologies but we need to get in front of the challenges they may present and mobile phones in schools as well as students' use of social media are just a couple of the challenges we are all facing to get in front of.

Just yesterday, as the Hon. Connie Bonaros mentioned earlier, a group of bullies allegedly filmed each other during a horrific attack on a year 8 student called Maddy. The attack has surfaced on social media. On a GoFundMe page, a family friend has recounted that Maddy continued to receive taunting messages, even whilst she was in hospital, which is concerning on many, many levels. My thoughts are with Maddy and her family.

Governments are recognising this is an area that needs to be addressed, but unfortunately not the Marshall Liberal government. 2020 kicked off a ban on using mobile phones during school hours for all public school students in Victoria and WA in a move to curb cyberbullying and prevent distractions in the classroom. Tasmania and New South Wales have also followed the lead of these states by committing to ban mobile phones in schools. All of the bans announced so far include potential exemptions for education purposes or students with medical conditions.

Banning phones in schools will not be universally popular but what is popular is leadership. When students walk through a New South Wales, Victorian, WA or Tassie school gate, they will have a greater opportunity to focus on learning, not how many likes they are getting or whatever else they might be doing on their phone. This seems like a reasonable concept. When our kids go to school they are able to put aside the distractions of smart phones and concentrate on the conversation that is happening in front of them and not the rolling chime of the text message in their hand. SA Labor was one of the first Australian political parties to commit to banning phones in schools but unfortunately SA will not be a leader in this space.