Especially without freely available data on it. Sure, the "social media and smartphone related" incidents went down. What's the rate of physical incidents? Has that changed at all? What is being counted as an incident? How free to kids really feel to report things?

Like I don't doubt that its better for kids focusing in class (I guess, in my experience, kids who checked their phone in class never got away with it for long tho) but to say its solved bullying or made this massive difference to safeguarding incidents is hard to believe.

All the videos we had to watch and whatever about cyberbullying were about how it's so bad because it doesn't stop when you get home. Kids not having their phones for 6 hours a day does next to nothing. They get their phone back at 3pm.

I was bullied *throughout* school, a lot (autistic queer kid, comes with the teritory), but I was never cyber bullied. Not even once. The idea that cyberbullying is this exponentially worse form of bullying is ridiculous. And even so, this putting phones in pouches doesn't address that.

Obvi I don't know how things have changed since, but smartphones and social media were common place from when I started secondary school. We were bombarded with more PSAs and information about cyber bullying than any other form of bullying or harrassment. They made it sound like an epidemic.

Esther Ghey encouraged Brianna to spend less time on her phone and hang out with people in real life and then her new friends killed her in cold blood and Esther Ghey is now campaigning for *phone jails for schoolkids*.

Just don't go on your phone at school. That'll fix everything.

Esther Ghey isn't trans and her commentary implies that Brianna was somehow a victim of being active on social media.

It's not at all bizarre to have fellow trans folks recognising the behaviour of someone who is failing to respect her daughter in death, seeing as a lot of us have lived it.

Not by kids who were solely radicalised by things they saw online while they were at school. By kids who were surrounded by anti-trans rhetoric being spouted on TV, in the newspaper, on the radio, by politicians including those in your own party.

What does this do to address any of that?

And that's rather besided the point, because Brianna Ghey was not murdered by phones or social media. Everyone including her mother is speaking as though Brianna killed herself because of online bullying. She was murdered, in person, by two kids she met at school. Not a stranger met online,

Where is that number from? The only mention of safeguarding I can find is the headteacher stating safeguarding incidents "related to phones and social media" are "virtually non-existent". Which is all well and good, but does that include incidents that happen outside of school?