A Devon teenager is spearheading a campaign for a complete ban on smartphones in schools across the United Kingdom after being exposed to graphic violent content including beheading videos during her school day.
Traumatic School Experiences
Flossie McShea, now 17, had disturbing videos of extreme pornography, shootings, and beheadings sent to her while at school from Year 7 onwards. The budding singer from Devon has joined forces with two fathers, Will Orr-Ewing and Pete Montgomery, in their legal bid for a judicial review seeking a mandatory smartphone ban in educational institutions.
Flossie believes the Department for Education has failed both her and countless other children by not implementing stronger protections. She revealed that smartphone use "completely changed my life from year 7 onwards" and described being sent a particularly distressing video where two young children found a gun, resulting in one accidentally shooting the other.
"I had to go home," Flossie recounted. "There were a lot of incidents like that and a lot of my friends had the same experiences."
The School Environment Amplifies Harm
Flossie explained that schools become particularly dangerous environments for sharing harmful content because perpetrators can witness immediate reactions from multiple classmates. "All of this really happens at school because you can see live reactions," she said. "We're all gathered in this place, so people feel it's much more appealing to share this stuff online when you can get a reaction from 30 kids in the classroom."
The teenager is convinced that without smartphones in schools, she would have been spared exposure to content no child should ever see. Her own school has since implemented a complete ban on smartphones, and Flossie has already observed positive changes.
"The other day I got on the school bus and a group of year 7s were laughing and chatting together," she noted. "I felt so happy for them. We never had that because we were just always looking down and scrolling."
Growing Support for Legal Action
Flossie isn't alone in her traumatic experiences. Katie Moore, a mother of three from Northampton, is joining the legal action against the government after her daughter was shown sexually explicit images in school changing rooms. In one particularly disturbing incident, her daughter was shown a video of men masturbating, which Mrs Moore described as "devastating."
"It's been exhausting as a parent, bringing up a teenager in a world that is so driven around pushing us to technology and being reliant on these technologies," Mrs Moore explained. She initially delayed giving her daughter a phone but eventually relented when all her friends had one.
In July 2025, Mr Orr-Ewing and Mr Montgomery wrote to Education Secretary Bridget Philipson, stating their intention to challenge the government's failure to include a mandatory school phone ban in safeguarding guidance. They have established an organisation called Generation Alpha CIC to support their campaign.
Freedom of information requests made by the campaigners in July revealed that in one school alone, 55 social-media related safeguarding incidents were passed to social services, with 17 of these referred to police.
Mr Montgomery stated: "It should be the easiest decision in the world for the Government to take, but they haven't taken it, so we have no other option but to go to court."
Current Policies and Opposition
A survey conducted by the Children's Commissioner earlier this year found that while 90% of secondary schools and 99.8% of primary schools have policies addressing phone use during the school day, the majority of secondary schools (79%) still permit pupils to bring phones provided they remain out of sight and unused. Only 3.5% completely prohibit phones from school premises.
Mrs Moore and other campaigners argue that these "out of sight" policies are insufficient to protect children and advocate for a complete statutory ban as the only effective solution.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) supports banning mobile phone use by pupils during school hours. Sarah Hannafin, NAHT's head of policy, told Metro: "While phones and the digital world clearly offer advantages, there is a time and place for their use. As well as the safety issues which can arise, they can be an unwanted distraction during the school day."
She acknowledged that many schools already restrict phones but noted this often comes at a cost, urging the government to help fund implementation of these protective measures.
