Would you swap your smartphone for a dumbphone?

So consumed have we become with social media and the constant stream of information leaking from the rectangle in our pocket, increasing numbers of us are said to be abandoning high-tech devices and switching off.

Sales of basic models are up as users turn to inexpensive, temporary devices - or burner phones - to remain contactable but not necessarily traceable.

Just last week my KentOnline colleague Joe Crossley put the concept to the test and ditched his smartphone for a £13 device while readily admitting that at the age of 23 it’s almost impossible to remember a time without such technology.

As a parent of pre-teens, I’m in a constant cycle of trying to curtail their screen use and control an insatiable appetite for the dopamine hit that comes with scrolling.

And I know I’m not alone.

At the start of this year writer Daisy Greenwell was overwhelmed with responses from exhausted parents when she launched her campaign for a smartphone-free childhood - challenging the social norm of giving a child a mobile when they skip off to secondary school.

Anchored in research about the impact on mental health and learning, the campaign wants tighter controls both within schools and away from them.

Yet in my experience - schools have become the biggest driver in making children dependent on technology.

From the moment my children stepped into a classroom at age four, everything from reading to spelling and maths practice at home could be - and very often was - done via an app. The number of logins and passwords we were keeping track of doubled overnight

And while the government is encouraging secondary school head teachers to ban phones - the guidance fails to acknowledge that most homework tasks in Year 7 and beyond are set via the very devices the education secretary wants outlawed.

Electronic quizzes, links to YouTube tutorials to watch, maths sums set online, homework that must be submitted before the lesson via a photograph…the reliance on phones is so significant I think I’d struggle to successfully confiscate it even if I wanted to.

And if I did - it’d simply be me logging into Google Classroom every couple of hours to keep track of the constant stream of tasks teachers are uploading daily.

Yes, we could swap the mobile for a laptop - but firstly the hand-me-down smartphone is a much cheaper option.

And secondly - the rate at which these instructions appear checking in once a day, or even every evening, wouldn’t cut it and sooner or later something would get missed.

I’ve no doubt lockdown - and homeschooling - turbo charged the rate at which schools adopted technology.

While the constant pressure on teachers - who are overworked and underpaid - means anything they can do to make things easier is undoubtedly an attractive prospect.

And I can see - wholeheartedly - how setting a task digitally to a group of 30 children (or more) is immediately quicker and easier if you zap it straight to their inboxes with everything they need attached.

There’s no room for jammed up printers, reams of paper, missing worksheets or confusion, and every deadline is laid out in black and white.

But if we’re going to get the next generation to ditch their devices then educators need to go old school too.