330: Are Personal Phones in Childcare Classrooms a Hidden Danger?

In this episode of Childcare Conversations, Kate and Carrie dive into the real risks of staff using personal phones in childcare settings. They share eye-opening stats about explicit content on devices and discuss why strict no-phone policies are a must to keep kids safe. They offer practical tips—like using phone organizers and staff training—to help directors protect children and avoid legal trouble. 

Their friendly, knowledgeable chat is a wake-up call for anyone in childcare: it’s time to take action and put safety first! 

Thanks for Listening 🎧

• Want to learn more? Check out our book; "From Overwhelmed to I Got This: Guaranteed Success Route to Directing Your Childcare Center" 📖
• Join our Facebook Group for Childcare professionals!
• Join our Podcast Newsletter!
• Want to be a guest on our podcast? Go to our website to learn more.
• Are you looking for director training in Texas? Check out our Texas Director Website for our training and additional resources!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Childcare Conversations with Kate and Carrie. So here's a statistic that might shock you. It shocked me a little bit, which is 20% of phones in the United States apparently have explicit sexual content on them. So that's one in five. So if you've got more than five people working at your school, there's a good chance that there is some sexual content on the phones or tablets of your staff. But that's private information, Carrie. Why does it matter? So the reason it matters is because I hear time and again, and you know, Kate does too, and everybody else does, director saying, How do we keep our staff off their phones? Um you have to, because if there is a one in five chance that if the staff are on their phone, they are accessing a device that has sexually explicit content, then they are extended something with sexually explicit content in a classroom with children, which sounds to me like a CPS call.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

So, okay, so so let's let's let's back up just a tad. Um, so Carrie and I get these calls from directors all the time, and they're talking about how their staff are doing this on their phone or doing that on their phone. Some programs actually still require the staff to basically use their own phone because they haven't invested in tablets for the school. So, first of all, shame on you. Get the budget, have one tablet per classroom, right? Period. Second of all, invest in a$5 shoe organizer that goes on the back of the office door with everybody's name for them to all put their phones in their phones in their little shoe pocket. Now, Carrie, you said something that I don't know if people put A to B.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

So I know they don't put A to B. Because if they did, we would not have so many centers who are in our coaching cohort or in our training sessions talking about how do I get my staff to stop using their personal phones.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Yeah. So first of all, if you've got it in your employee handbook that they're not allowed to have them, then you, as the leader of the program, have to enforce what's in your employee handbooks. Period. To me, this is a no question. So if you aren't really sure how to do a three-strike discipline program, reach out to us. We'll be happy to have one or share with you with one, right? But you should have a three-step disciplinary, and this is not, oh, well, I've told them and I'm going to give them a few days. It's like, no, you told them, and if the next day they're on their phone, then they get a write-up.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

If they do it, then they'll quit, and then I'll have nobody to work at my center.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Well, so then maybe we should take your perspective, Carrie. If now all of a sudden we've got, you know, we've got 10 staff, which means we've got at least two that probably have sexually explicit content, that means that when you see a three-year-old or a school year schoolager on a personal staff person's phone, what did you say we have to do, Carrie? Well, CPS. So, but they're just watching some little YouTube video or they're looking at the pictures of my cat.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

I mean, the number of times I've been on my phone and I've been on one app and I just glance away, and now all of a sudden I'm signed into American Airlines. I didn't mean to sign into American Airlines, but it's just another app on my phone. It is so easy for someone to accidentally get access to another part of a phone. And I'm not saying that your staff are trying to put kids at risk, but they don't have control over every message that is sent to them. And we all know about unsolicited pictures that are sent to primarily young women. I don't have a way for you to protect that staff person from getting those pictures while they're at work, other than by saying you can't have the you cannot have the personal electronics in the classroom except for a watch that does not have a graphics capability. If they have a smartwatch that gets visual texts, you know, gets the pictures from a text, they cannot have that kind of smartwatch in the classroom either. They can't. They have to have a done.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

We've all had that opportunity, that that that time when somebody sends us something and it pops up on our phone. So even if you think you're safe, if it is in the room, you're not safe. And so, okay, so this happens. What do what do I do as a director? I guess I don't understand, Carrie.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

If you see a child have access or looking at a staff member's personal phone or personal tablet, in my opinion, like two better safe than sorry, you have to put that person on probation immediately, make a call to CPS and let CPS do an investigation to see if there was any potential information there. Now, that may be more extreme than most people want to go. You may prefer to put them on probation and say, I need to see your phone right now and do the investigation yourself. But here's where that gets tricky. Because if there was sexual content on that phone and you did the investigating, instead of having CPS do the investigating, now you're going to have to self-report about the fact that you did not report the CPS. Yeah. So you're gonna have to still call CPS if there was content, and you're gonna have to report yourself both for children being put in danger and for the fact that you did not report the potential child endangerment.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Okay, so let's so let's take this one more step because we're we're we're there. We've brought that up a couple of times. What happens? You make the report so big, so you know, I make a report. What happens to the teacher who you made the report on?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Well, the short answer is that there's a good chance that they're losing their job. And that means this whole thing about, well, if I take away their phone, they're gonna quit. Okay, or you have to fire them. But for the long term, for that person, if they had a phone that had any sexual content and a child accessed that phone, they now have exposure to being arrested for child maltreatment and child sexual abuse, and then being listed on the sex offender registry for the rest of their life because some person sent them an unsolicited photo on a phone, and then they let the a kid in the classroom watch Miss Rachel videos on their phone in the classroom.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

But sometimes, I mean, I mean, let's be honest. We've all met that three-year-old that if you've got your phone, because they're used to doing it with their parents, right? So your phone, it could even be in your purse. It could be in your pocket. Um, and I've seen people in their pocket with the screen facing outwards, and I've seen pictures pop up when they got a text message for somebody. So let's be like, let's, this is not a it's never happened or it it the chances are slim. Because if I remember right, we've actually had something like this happen with a back when we had flip phones, and we had a staff person who got one of those picks from an employee from a from a significant other dating human. Um, and a kid opened the phone. You you can't control whether or not a kid's gonna open your phone, if the kid's going to grab your phone because they heard a buzzing. I mean, I know school agers that would hear it buzzing and want to bring you your phone because your phone is ringing.

unknown 8:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Because they think they're being helpful.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

And they are being helpful. Um, but they might be helping somebody out of, you know, their ability to earn a living for the rest of their life in, you know, a lot of different areas.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

And so this sounds like this sounds like a really serious issue, Carrie. Why do we have directors? Like, where is the disconnect? I guess is one thing is why is this, why do people not make a bigger deal out of this? Um, is it because it's predominantly women in the industry?

SPEAKER_01 8:46

No, I think it's that people have not made this connection. And I didn't realize that people hadn't made this connection until we were, you know, in our coaching cohort. And like the fact that people had not realized that people that that their employees having phones in the classroom was a danger to the children, not just an annoyance. It's not just that it's annoying that the staff have their phones so that they might not be doing active supervision because instead they're like, I'm just gonna get one TikTok in. Like, I'm waiting for kids to go to the bathroom. I'm I'm waiting for the kids in the bathroom line. I'm just gonna check a TikTok real quick, or I'm gonna check Instagram real quick, or whatever. So that's what we tend to think is that if they have their phone, they're going to be texting or they're gonna be scrolling socials. And so it means that they're not they're not doing the job that I paid them to do. And so there's some of that frustration that I'm paying you to do to watch children, not to watch uh reels on Instagram. And so it feels like a disrespect thing, it doesn't feel like a danger thing.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

It's because we get it, we get in our own way, right? So I mean, to me, this is the emotional part of an owner or director going, you know, which again, if in your job description and in your employee handbook says they must be able to see and hear the kids at all times, and you catch them on their phone, again, second reason why that should be a write-up. First of all, if you said no personal cell phones and technology in the building, that should be a write-up. If you catch them doing it while they're on the playground, that's a write-up for literally endangering the kids because you're not doing active supervision. But what you're talking about is a whole other level of reason. Now, I have my own theory. My own theory is that most of the time when people think about porn, I'm gonna say the four-letter word, they think about porn or that kind of stuff on an electronic device. I would suspect that probably if you have a conversation with your staff, the majority of them are going to think that only applies to men, right? Yeah, we don't think so as a result, we don't know. I mean, it's a four-letter word we don't ever talk about, usually as women, and even less in early childcare.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

And but we have the thought of what exposure to sexual content means. So we think that exposure to sexual content means that they are watching videos of adult behaviors. But sexual content also means seeing body parts. It also means how do you word it? Because I just love the way you call it. Oh, jiggly bits. Everybody's got jiggly bits. Um, but it's also you there may be moisturizers, massagers, other things, underwear, like all sexual content.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

And children's not things I get in my social media feed anymore. I'm like going, I know how old I am, but do you have to show me one, you know, every scroll, even if it's a different brand?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

You know, the number of bra and underwear ads I get is ridiculous. I know that I own the things that go into those, but really, I don't need that much advertising. Do you think I'm changing them four times a day? I don't know. But again, that is sexual content. So if the kid is looking over the teacher's shoulder during nap time and they get another bra ad, you've just exposed that child to sexual content. But I think the other thing is we have this, oh, kids these days, they can't be without their phones. It's their security object. It's like they're blankie or their pacifier. And so you're dismissing that adult and also saying that they don't have to have responsibility when you just go, oh, it's just because she's 19, she can't be without her phone, or I'm sure she'll have an anxiety attack. But she's not gonna have a phone.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

She's not gonna have her phone at the fast food restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yeah, you can't run a you can't run a fryer um doing tater tots and and curly fries with your phone in your hand. You can't have you can't be uh, you know, a valet with your phone in your hand. You can't like very few jobs can you have your phone in your hand while doing that job. It's not just our industry, but our industry, we have kids' lives on the line.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

So if I'm a director listening to this, and of course now I'm a little panicked that, you know, oh my God, I haven't done this. I may be in a lot of trouble. Yes, absolutely. This is a take action item today. This is not a oh, I'll get around to it. So here's what you need to do: look at what's in your employee handbook related to your electronic devices. Period, right? Start today enforcing it. If you want to have a little staff meeting and tell everybody, fine.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

If you want to have a question, if you want to send a push, if you want to send a push notification out to your staff communication tool, whether you're using WhatsApp or, you know, group me or however you're communicating to your staff, Asana, I don't care. So, you know, you can you can give people a heads up that, hey, this has been a policy, um, and we've been lax on it. You can give them the heads up. You are not required to because they already signed off that they had the handbook. If it's not in your handbook, Kate, what do they need to do if there's nothing in the handbook about phones?

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Well, if it's not in your handbook, you need to get it in your handbook again, today. And you need to so up phones, phones, handbooks, parent handbooks, and employee handbooks are living documents. They should be updated regularly. So when it's updated, date it, make sure, make sure it's dated in the handbook as far as when it was an update. Make sure that every staff person signs off that they got the new policy. I would, if I were you, I would immediately have a staff training within the next week. You have no excuse. By the 1st of April, all of y'all should have this training on the schedule. And if you need to, have a conversation with your local police officer, CPS, have somebody come in and do the training and scare the shit out of them.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

And it doesn't have to be an evening training, it could be a lunchtime training, and you do half of the training for the people on lunch A and half of the, you know, do the training twice for lunch A people and lunch B people. And you may have to do a third one because you don't have a time when everybody's out of the infant room because infants and toddlers, we know it makes it hard to do lunch breaks. But find a way, and if you have if you can't get everybody there, have the video the training you're doing be recorded and then send it to those people through one of the apps where you can check to see who's watched the videos. You can do that with Zoom, and I don't know if you can do it with the free Zoom because it's been so long since I had free Zoom, but maybe pay for the paid Zoom for a month so that you can see who watched your videos. You can also do it with another product called Loom. And I know you can get like 10 free videos on Loom, but they're like they have to be less than 10 minutes. But get the information out there. And I love Kate's idea of having somebody who is a counselor or a police officer or a CPS caseworker talk about the exposure to sexual content.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

Because just because the exposure might be perceived as low, do you want to be the person who a exposes a child, or because you didn't enforce your own staff handbook, staff policies, you've now put an 18 or 19 year old who had an 18 or 19-year-old significant other send them inappropriate photos, now have to be on the sexual offender registry for the rest of their life. That is just plain damn rude on both parts. Yes, they're at fault, but you're at fault as the director for not enforcing your own policies and procedures.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Get a spot. It is not kind. You know, that is not being kind to your staff. That is putting your staff at risk because you don't want to have a difficult conversation and you're afraid that some of your staff may quit. If they are so volatile that they're going to quit and lose their job because you took their phone away when they knew in advance they weren't allowed to have it. Do you really want them in a classroom full of two-year-olds? So maybe we hire up a little before you, you know, before you implement so that you can handle it if one or two of them exit themselves out of your program. But again, part of your legal responsibility is to protect children from child maltreatment. It is a legal responsibility. And if you are found to not be doing that, then you can serve jail time. I don't want to make this a bigger deal than it is, but I think we've been minimizing it for way too long.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

So I think we need to use, I think we need to use the grown-up words. We talk a lot about, you know, using the appropriate anatomy when talking to children. But you know what? We skate around this topic like nothing as grown-ass women. Well, let's be honest, because it's not just the men in our lives. And I should probably look up that statistic. Because at one point in time, it was something like as much as 40% of all women regularly engage in that type of content. Not just have ever gotten that email or that text message. So, again, so if you're thinking about 40%, that's four out of 10 of your staff. Okay. So hopefully this is an episode that caused you to um maybe stop, take some notes, create an action plan. If you are not sure what you need to be doing, reach out to Kate and Carrie at Kateand Carrie at Childcare Conversations.com. This is one that you probably need to make sure you share the episode with everybody on staff. If you're a director, share it with that owner. If you're a director and you've got an assistant director who's maybe supposed to be in charge of this, send this to them and scare them too.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Send it if you're in a faith-based organization or in a nonprofit, send it to the board. If you have an attorney that helps you at your school, send it to them and go, how should I address this? You know, get some additional feedback. Because again, yeah, we're not lawyers and we don't play them on TV. We're not lawyers and we don't play them on TV. We are trainers who train people on how to uh protect children from child maltreatment.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Actually, Carrie, we are subject matter experts, and Carrie is often hired as an expert witness in cases like this. So Carrie is minimizing her experience and her real experience in the state of Texas in the last 10 years on this topic. And we've had to deal with this since phones have come into classrooms because we had people with flip phones that got that stuff too. So take your action plan, go revise your handbook, share it with whoever needs to know, and we will talk to y'all on a few days about some much more interesting topics.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Much more lighthearted, positive, uplifting topics. So text the show if you've got any questions about this, just go into your show notes and text the show, and we will talk to you in a few days.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Thanks for tuning in. We love bringing you real talk and fresh insight from the world of early childhood education. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay connected and catch all of the latest episodes. And if you're planning a conference, training, or special event, Kate and Carrie would love to speak to your audience. You can learn more about their keynote sessions and workshops at kateandcary.com. If you learned something today, share the show and leave us a review below. We'll see you next time on Child Care Conversations.