Country To Coast Sapphire Coast Anglican College | Newsletter

College Principal's Address

The Benefits of ‘Poor’ Communications?

An excerpt from an ABC News article, by Rhiannon Stevens, 16th November 2025: The phone rings. Sally’s 10-year-old runs into the hallway to where the phone sits on a slim table, pulls up a stool that’s been placed there for long, cord-twirling chats, and answers: “Hi … just one sec, I’ll ask Mum.” Hearing that simple conversation brings so much joy, Sally says. “That is pure organic childhood right there.” It’s also a relief. Her children contacting their friends without needing Sally to be the conduit is one less thing to worry about: “In school holidays, where parents are trying to work, organise play dates, then, all of a sudden, that kid wants to FaceTime their friend or Nana wants to FaceTime. It’s so overwhelming.” Sally’s journey back to the landline began when her eldest child received an iPad in Year 3 at their school’s request. “Within six months, we completely saw our child change personality and become obsessed with Messenger Kids and Roblox,” she says. The family in Rhiannon’s story had decided to limit their children to the use of a single, communal phone at home because, ‘smartphones were stealing our kids’ childhoods’. At The Armidale School in regional NSW, an experiment banning smartphones for Year 7 boarders after the school day ends has been transformational, according to the Assistant Principal: “It’s remarkable, the change, the students have a far greater depth of understanding of each other, the staff feel like they know the kids better, and the house is full of conversation, more creative, and there’s constant play.” I bet that anyone over the age of about 45 experienced a warm flush of nostalgia when picturing that primarily pre-1990s scene of a landline phone (what other sort of phone was there?) in a communal space, accessible to all and providing privacy for nobody? I well remember my first semi-mobile phone experience, an enormous, tissue-box-sized, black Motorola device, issued to me by my employer in 1991, Gold Fields Mining Corporation, solely for use in case of vehicle breakdown far from help in the mountains of northern Nevada. I say “semi-mobile’ because it had to be attached to the cigarette lighter fitting in my Ford F-250 ute in order to receive sufficient power to make a call.

Now, several decades on, unfortunately, my role includes responding to weekly conflicts between students, whose mobile phone/social media misuse allows them to connect in ways unimaginable back in the ‘90s. Sadly, these youngsters are often emboldened to use language and threats that they would never dream of uttering face-to-face. With December 10th looming and the law in Australia changing to require many social media platforms, such as Snapchat, to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent users under the age of 16 from creating accounts, I fervently hope positive change will come. One of the final, College-wide developments of 2025, the updating of our Behaviour Management Policy and Program, places any social media misuse at Step 5, attracting at least an internal suspension, plus subsequent restorative steps to explore cause, effect, and future prevention. Allied closely to this has been active intervention by Secondary School pastoral care staff, utilising a series of small-group workshops to focus on creating positive, real-life relationships between all our students, while considering the potentially disastrous consequences of social media abuses. The rose-coloured glasses view of landline living that was sufficient for so many decades is unlikely ever to return in more than a tiny minority of households (but we do have some SCAC parents who restrict mobile phone and social media access for their children until Year 11 or 12, and with no ill effect, in fact, quite the opposite!). However, it is incumbent on all of us adults to help younger family members, and as educators, our students tread respectfully and extremely carefully in the virtual, but very risky, online jungle that has replaced the bottom steps of a carpeted stairway. I do, sometimes, lament the passing of that landline living, hence my delight in the lovely imagery of 'long, cord-twirling chats’ (with nosey siblings straining to follow the conversation!).

David Proudlove College Principal