There’s a special kind of magic that comes with childhood, a space where imagination is allowed to stretch its legs, where friendships are built face‑to‑face, and where the world is still wonderfully big. Yet today, many children, especially girls, grow up with a smartphone in their pocket long before they have the tools to navigate the complexities that a device brings. The result is a childhood where the digital world often arrives long before the emotional readiness needed to make sense of it.
This tension sits at the heart of the conversations I regularly have with parents of PF girls and prospective parents. No previous generation has had to balance a young person’s natural growth with the intensity of constant connectivity, instant communication, and the curated worlds of social media. At PF, our responsibility is not just to educate, it is to protect the conditions in which young people grow best. That is why we are, and will continue to remain, a phone‑free school.
Our approach aligns closely with the Government’s strengthened guidance, which advises that all schools, independent and state alike, should ensure a mobile‑phone‑free environment during the school day from April 2026.
This national direction simply reinforces what we have long believed: that school must be one of the few protected spaces left in a child’s life, places where attention is their own, friendships evolve naturally, and childhood can unfold without digital spectatorship.
Much of the research carried out over the past decade supports this stance. Jean Twenge, in iGen, charts clear associations between increased screen time and rising levels of anxiety, loneliness, and sleep disruption among teenagers.
Interesting article here from TIME with Jean Twenge, on how smartphones destroyed Gen Z.
Jonathan Haidt, in The Anxious Generation, argues persuasively that adolescents need more time to develop the emotional resilience required to deal with the pressures of smartphones and social media. Sherry Turkle’s work demonstrates that empathy, an essential skill for navigating teenage years, grows through real conversation rather than digital messaging. Catherine Steiner‑Adair, in The Big Disconnect, goes further still, describing the emotional fatigue created by a life lived in the glow of constant connection.
These voices do not call for a rejection of technology. Instead, they invite us to pause, to consider the timing, and to ensure our children have the strength, independence, and sense of self required before stepping fully into the digital world. A smart phone becomes a healthy tool only when it enters a life already possessing balance, resilience, and perspective.
Here at Prior’s Field School, our outdoor spaces make this philosophy tangible. The grounds offer room to breathe, green, open, and full of possibility. Without phones, these spaces become places of real connection rather than content creation. Girls invent games, run, climb trees, talk, dream, and imagine. Laughter carries across the lawns, and Rose Garden, not muted by screens. Friendships grow outward, not inward. Our outdoor environment is not simply an aesthetic asset; it is a developmental one. It gives our girls a daily reminder that the world is wide, bright, and real and that they have a place in it beyond the digital.
I often think about what our founder, Julia Huxley might say were she to walk our grounds today. Julia, whose belief in breadth of mind, independence of thought, and imaginative freedom shaped the educational ethos that underpins Prior’s Field, would likely admire the ingenuity of modern technology while insisting that its timing matters. She might ask: Does this device widen a girl’s world, or quietly shrink it? Does it deepen her thinking, or distract from it? Does it build independence, or encourage dependency?
Her son Aldous, whose understanding of technology’s seductive pull feels astonishingly modern, warned that the greatest risks come not from harmful tools, but irresistible ones. A smartphone is not malevolent; it is magnetic. And that magnetism, endless, buzzing, glowing, can draw attention, energy, and identity away from a young person who is not yet ready to resist it.
By remaining phone‑free, Prior’s Field places childhood first. We give our girls the chance to live rather than perform, to play rather than scroll, to speak rather than type, and to think without interruption. We provide the stillness needed for imagination, the space needed for friendship, and the confidence needed for independence.
Phones will, inevitably, become part of our girls’ worlds. But that moment should arrive when they are ready, not simply because everyone else has one. Childhood is short, and its influence is lifelong. By keeping the Prior’s Field school day phone‑free, we honour that childhood. We protect it. And we give our girls the freedom to grow into young women who can meet the digital world thoughtfully, bravely, and wholly on their own terms.