Hello!

You probably already know this, but as of Monday 6th of June 2016 all mobile devices have been banned altogether, unless you are outdoors. This includes any form of phone, portable gaming console, portable music player, or any related device.

Now, if you are reading this it is likely that I don't really need to convince you, but I'm going to list a few reasons why there should be a designated indoor area for phones, previously (and ideally) the canteen area.

• People want to be inside, especially the kind of people that spend time on phones!
• Phone screens tend to be difficult to see outside, leading to crowding in shaded areas.
• Outside, accidents that occur when you aren't focussed on your surroundings (such as walking/running into people) are far, far more common when people are on phones than indoors.
• There is a worrying lack of sufficient places to sit down outside, I could not imagine more than twenty people sitting down on all seats at once.
• The excess of people needing to be outside will lead to heavily reduced canteen sales due to packed lunch, or just not wanting to eat (not being bothered).
• In order to hear phone audio outside, you MUST wear headphones, there is no way around it. If people are showing off a sound-related *thing* on their phones, they will have to do it awkwardly. People who need sound for their activities will end up being far more antisocial.
• Inside or outside, people generally still talk to each other while on their phones, often the phones provide a topic that can bring otherwise separate groups of students together.
• Often, the activities on these phones form communication lines between students outside of school that wouldn't have otherwise existed, basically giving people more friends outside of school.
• If you have seen the kind of games played on the playground (such as the "kick a ball in the air to see who it hits" game), this would not result in positive benefit, more likely in broken phones!

In short, there are many reasons to allow phones in a specified indoor area, preferably the canteen (or possibly the library).

Please consider this petition and pass it on to those you know would benefit from its implementation!