School Phone Bans Leave Online Misogyny After the Bell

Daniel Kebede asked in April 2024 for a government inquiry into online misogyny reaching schools through smartphones. No such inquiry was set up.

England has since made school days phone-free by law, pushed porn sites to check ages, and promised to ban social media for under-16s from spring 2027. Teachers still say the manosphere walks in with the pupils.

The Inquiry That Never Arrived

Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, spoke before a debate on online sexism at the union’s Bournemouth conference. He had worked with girls who had faced abuse, violence and sexual assault more than once, and he tied that harm to what boys could open on a phone.

“It’s a problem that I think that Government have completely failed to intervene in,” he said. “I think there needs to be a real inquiry into this from Government which makes some recommendations on some significant reforms.” He added that schools and parents could not police a problem that was “just far too widespread,” and that ministers needed to “take on big tech.”

A government spokesperson at the time pointed to the Online Safety Act, mobile phone limits in schools, and plans to tighten relationships and health education. That was the Conservative answer. Labour has since stacked new rules on top. The named inquiry still never sat.

HOW THE RULES STACKED UP

1. 10 June 2021: Ofsted, after Everyone’s Invited testimonies, finds sexual harassment “normalised” for children, having visited 32 schools and colleges and spoken to more than 900 pupils.
2. April 2024: Kebede calls for a government inquiry into dangerous smartphone content and classroom sexism.
3. 25 July 2025: Online Safety Act duties to protect children, including porn age checks, take effect under Ofcom.
4. 26 February 2026: The NEU-led campaign publishes its algorithm test of new teen accounts.
5. 15 June 2026: Ministers announce an under-16 social media ban, aiming for spring 2027.
6. 29 June 2026: Phone guidance for schools in England becomes statutory; schools are told to follow it from 1 September 2026.
7. 23 September 2026: Ofcom opens an investigation into Pornhub’s age checks.

The 2021 inspection was the first official warning that sexist name-calling and unwanted explicit images had become ordinary for girls. Around 9 in 10 of the girls Ofsted spoke to said those things happened “a lot” or “sometimes.” Amanda Spielman, then chief inspector, said many children, “particularly girls, feel they have to accept sexual harassment as part of growing up.”

Teachers Still Meet the Feed in Class

Kebede’s 2024 point was not that schools had never written a policy. It was that the attitudes arrived ready-made. Union research published with the Big Tech’s Little Victims campaign still reads that way.

WHAT TEACHERS AND PARENTS TOLD THE CAMPAIGN

• Teacher sightings: 70% of teachers frequently see pupils’ behaviour, attitudes or language shaped by extreme or harmful online content.
• Platform role: 89% of teachers say social media platforms play a major role in exposing children to that material.
• Parent age line: Nearly two-thirds of parents say 13 is too young for social media, and more than 70% support a ban for under-16s.

In classrooms that looks like sexist talk treated as normal, female staff talked over or ignored, and boys repeating lines about “high value” men as if they were common sense. Kebede has described girls being targeted and female colleagues facing open hostility. The feed does not stay on the glass.

He has also been blunt about porn. In April 2025, before another NEU debate on men’s violence against women and girls, he said the average 12-year-old can reach “the most hardcore pornography” on a phone, and that this damages boys’ views of women, girls, sex and relationships. That was his personal view then on a statutory school phone ban. England now has the legal wrapper. The porn pipeline was never only a lesson-time problem.

Three Minutes to Harm on a New Account

The campaign’s algorithm experiment on four teen profiles tried to show what a first week looks like when a British 13-year-old joins TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube and Instagram. Researchers built two girl personas and two boy personas, used ordinary interests such as gaming, beauty, music and sport, and scrolled for up to 30 minutes a day.

WHAT THE NEW ACCOUNTS WERE SERVED

Kebede wrote that systems built to maximise engagement do not behave differently because the user is a child. Teachers, he said, are not arguing about harm in theory. They are dealing with the behaviour it leaves behind.

Within minutes, children were shown harmful and inappropriate content, including guns, self-harm, sexualised material and misogynistic narratives.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary, National Education Union

He has also dismissed half measures. Ministers announced a six-week home trial with 300 teenagers, testing full app blocks, one-hour daily limits, overnight curfews and a control group. Kebede’s reply was that a partial ban still leaves the clip in the group chat. If one child in a friendship circle stays on the app, the rest still see the video.

What England’s Phone Ban Covers at School

From 1 September 2026, schools in England are expected to follow statutory guidance that all schools should be mobile phone-free by default. The legal hook is section 36 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, in force from 29 June 2026. Heads must prohibit phones throughout the school day, including lessons, corridors, break and lunch.

That is a school-hours rule. It does not switch off TikTok at 4pm. DfE figures already showed how much of the work had been attempted on paper. Research from the Children’s Commissioner, cited in the department’s own parent advice, found 99.8% of primary schools and 90% of secondary schools already had policies that limited or restricted phones during the day.

Practice lagged the policies. The National Behaviour Survey for 2024 to 2025 found 58% of secondary pupils, rising to 65% in key stage 4, reported phones being used without permission in at least some lessons. Ofsted is now expected to look at phone policies during inspections. Lockable pouches, office hand-ins and lockers are the methods heads are using. Some sixth forms may get limited exceptions, kept away from younger pupils.

Kebede had come round to a statutory school ban as a way to take heat off leaders, teachers and parents. He also kept saying the harder job sat outside the gates. Young people, he warned in 2024, already know how to get around parental controls. A pouch for seven hours does not touch the other 17.

Porn Gates and the Search Back Door

The Online Safety Act was the other half of the 2024 government reply. Porn services have had to use highly effective age assurance since January 2025, with wider child-protection duties from 25 July 2025. Ofcom says the checks are now running at scale, and that highly effective age checks for children are helping. It also says the job is not done.

OFCOM’S AGE-CHECK LEDGER

• Stronger prompts: The share of children who hit a highly effective age check, among those asked to prove their age, rose from 25% in July 2025 to 43% in January 2026.
• Volume: A sample of 32 services ran 69 million age checks between July and December 2025, a 23-fold rise on the previous six months.
• Porn sites: By June 2026, 64 of the UK’s top 100 porn services had age checks, and 10 more geo-blocked UK users; all of the top 10 had checks.
• Who still tries: 8% of children in Ofcom’s monitoring study attempted to reach porn; 87% of those visits lasted under 30 seconds.

The leak is search. Ofcom found 33% of first-page Google results and 54% on Bing, in a logged-out test, led to porn sites with no age checks or other protections. Four per cent of children in the study reached at least one porn service with no checks. Google and Bing have agreed to work on that gap. Search engines are not required, under the Act, to use those checks to keep children off porn.

Social apps are a separate weak point. Some have relied on age inference, reading behaviour to guess who is a child. Ofcom says those methods are not in its guidance as highly effective, has opened a TikTok investigation, and says inference will not be enough to enforce an under-16 social media ban. On 23 September 2026 it also opened an investigation into Aylo, Pornhub’s provider, over whether a process that leans on Apple age signals is highly effective.

Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, said age checks are “a cornerstone” of the UK’s online safety laws when they are done properly, and that too many services still have no checks or weak ones. Ofcom is due to send Parliament, by the end of October, a rapid assessment of what a highly effective check looks like for proving someone is over 16.

Spring 2027 Is the Earliest Feeds Go Dark

On 15 June 2026, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall set out the next layer. Social platforms would be stopped from offering services to under-16s, using a model close to Australia’s, with extra UK blocks on livestreaming and stranger contact, including in games. Messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal are not intended to be in the ban. Regulations are meant to go to Parliament by the end of 2026 and to take effect in spring 2027.

The public call for views, Growing Up in the Online World, drew more than 116,000 responses. In that exercise, 9 in 10 parents backed an under-16 social media ban, a different 9-in-10 from Ofsted’s 2021 girls. Two-thirds of young people agreed that children younger than 16 should not use at least some platforms.

Starmer said tech firms “had their chance and failed.” Kendall said power was being taken off the platforms and put back with parents. Kebede had already backed the age line in public, including after Esther Ghey, whose daughter Brianna was murdered, argued for it.

Esther Ghey, the mother of murdered trans teenager Brianna Ghey, speaking on Kuenssberg is a real reminder of what real courage looks like.

Losing a child is every parent’s worst nightmare.

Her call for a ban on social media for under-16s is right.

We cannot keep leaving…

— Daniel Kebede (@DanielKebedeNEU) January 25, 2026

WHAT WE KNOW

• In scope, as announced: User-to-user platforms built for posting and algorithms, named as including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.
• Out of scope, as intended: WhatsApp and Signal, plus a narrow exemptions list for education, shopping and music streaming, still to be fixed in regulations.
• Extra blocks: Livestreaming and stranger contact off for under-16s, and off by default for 16- and 17-year-olds; sexualised AI companion bots held to 18.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The final list: Ministers said they would set out later in 2026 exactly which services the rules will cover.
• Workarounds: VPNs, borrowed logins and mis-stated ages are the obvious holes; Ofcom has already warned that today’s inference tools cannot hold a ban at the front door.
• Enforcement kit: Ofcom has been asked to review its own capacity, and app-store and device-level checks are still being designed.

The objection that children will simply route around a ban is not a new one. Kebede used a version of it in 2024 against family controls. It now sits under the 2027 law. Ofcom’s search findings already show a child who is blocked on one site looking for another. A ban that starts in spring 2027 also leaves this school year, and the next, running on the current mix of pouches, porn gates and feeds.

Corridor Hostility Outlasts the School Bell

The people who absorb the leftover content are still the ones Kebede named in 2024. Girls who get the comments. Women on the staff who get the same scripts. Boys who arrive with a ready-made story about status and control. Phone pouches can quiet a corridor at 11am. They do not rewrite what was watched at midnight.

England has done the part of Kebede’s demand that fits a school behaviour policy. It has not done the inquiry. It has built age checks that catch some porn and miss the search box. It has promised a social media cutoff that does not bite until spring 2027, and it has opened a Pornhub file while TikTok’s age tools are already under investigation.

In the first weeks of the new legal phone rules, the test is simple. If the sexist line still arrives with the child, the school-hours fix has done what it can do, and the rest of the day still belongs to the algorithm.