Jayne-Ann Young, principal of Queen Margaret College Wellington. Schools have been dealing with smartphone use by students for the better part of a decade, so are they are necessity in a modern world, or a scourge that needs to be removed? Sarah Catherall reports. On a sunny Wellington lunchtime, students at Queen Margaret College are clustered on the school lawn, laughing and chatting. They’re making eye contact, they’re engaging, and they’re the things that principal Jayne-Ann Young spoke about when she told parents the night before about the reasons why the private girls’ school banned phones during school hours. Young’s voice boomed in the auditorium when she told parents what sparked the ban: a Tik Tok video, which went viral last year, showing a man committing suicide amid what appeared to be a cutesy video of kittens playing.