Cayman’s young people do not agree on whether children should be kept off social media or whether phones belong in schools. They do agree on something more fundamental: they want a clear route into the decisions being made about their lives.

That was the strongest message to emerge from a discussion at the University College of the Cayman Islands with visiting British advocates Baroness Shaista Gohir OBE and Yvette Williams MBE.

The discussion began with students asking Baroness Gohir and Williams for their views on UK legislation concerning social media use among children under 16, before broadening into the Government’s new phone-free school policy, cyberbullying, mental health, parental pressures and the role young people can play in public decision-making.

But as the discussion progressed, the question became less about technology and more about power: when young people are asked what they think, what happens to their views afterwards?

The students did not produce a single position on phones or social media. Some favoured tighter controls. Others questioned how restrictions could be enforced and whether families needed more support rather than more rules.

On one issue, however, the discussion repeatedly converged: young people wanted to be heard before decisions were finalised, rather than being invited to comment after the fact. Baroness Gohir summed up the point with the phrase: “Nothing about us without us.”

UCCI student Cassandra said she personally supported restrictions, arguing that social media was exposing young people to pressures that could affect their mental and emotional wellbeing.

“I think, personally, it should,” she said.

She argued that children were being exposed to pressures and expectations before they were ready to deal with them, while online platforms could influence how young people saw themselves and what they believed they were expected to be.

“Social media is a big harm to a lot of us, and mentally and emotionally,” Cassandra said.

She argued that age groups could be given access to different types of content, rather than treating access to the online world as an all-or-nothing question.

Baroness Shaista said the issue was also being debated in the UK, particularly around legislation addressing potential harms to children online.

But the students quickly moved from the principle of restricting access to the practical question of enforcement.

Who would check a child’s age? Who would monitor what children were doing? And how much supervision could parents realistically provide?

Baroness Shaista also pointed to the way social-media platforms are designed.

“Algorithms are designed to keep you hooked,” she said.

For the students, the concern was not simply the amount of time spent online. They discussed the effect of constant exposure to images, opinions and lifestyles on young people’s confidence and emotional wellbeing.

But the conversation did not paint social media as entirely negative.

The same platforms can give young people a way to promote businesses, discuss community issues, showcase local culture and reach audiences without waiting for traditional institutions to give them a platform.

That made the question more complicated than simply whether social media should be restricted.

The discussion repeatedly returned to the pressures facing families.

Cassandra said some parents were working two or three jobs and could not necessarily monitor everything their children were doing online.

“Many of them have to work two, three jobs just to make it here,” she said.

She argued that parents needed practical support and guidance, not simply instructions to monitor their children more closely.

Her suggestion was to establish boundaries that families could realistically maintain - allowing a child to use a tablet, for example, but taking it away at a set time in the evening.

The aim, she said, should also be to teach children responsibility and help them understand right from wrong.

The point reflected a tension throughout the discussion: a restriction may be straightforward to announce, but much harder to enforce in homes where parents are already balancing work, family and financial pressures.

Cassandra put it more bluntly when discussing children and devices.

“Kids are very jiggy-jiggy, so you will never know what they do behind your back,” she said.

The remark drew attention to the limits of parental control in an environment where young people can move between devices, platforms and private conversations with relative ease.

The discussion took on greater immediacy when Donnette Goddard raised the Government’s new policy banning personal electronic devices in government schools.

Education Minister Rolston Anglin MP announced on August 21 that government schools would prohibit personal electronic devices, including mobile phones and other devices used for communication or connectivity. The policy took effect at the start of the 2026/27 academic year on August 26. The Government says the policy is intended to reduce distractions, support student safety and wellbeing, and promote responsible technology use.

Goddard, the Director of Student Life at UCCI, told the group that the announcement had received applause from teachers and parents attending the Education Professionals’ Welcome Event.

She then asked the students what they thought.

Again, there was no unanimous answer.

The discussion raised a practical distinction: taking phones out of schools may reduce one form of distraction, but it does not necessarily remove cyberbullying, harmful content or social pressure from young people’s lives.

Those problems can continue beyond school hours.

The students therefore returned to the question of what a policy is intended to achieve.

If the objective is concentration in classrooms, keeping phones away during the school day addresses one part of the problem.

If the objective is protecting young people from online harms, the students suggested that education, parental support and responsible technology use would also have to form part of the response.

The conversation eventually moved beyond phones and social media.

The students began questioning whether young people had a meaningful route into policymaking.

Yvette Williams put the issue directly.

“Where do we hear those voices? Do their voices carry any power or decision-making responsibilities?” she asked.

Williams argued that governments and organisations could create structures that gave young people a formal role rather than relying on occasional consultations.

“It’s really easy for government or local business to tweak their governance structure so that they have at least one young voice on there,” she said.

But she stressed that the role should carry genuine decision-making responsibility.

Williams described youth parliamentarians and youth ambassadors in her own community and said young people had increasingly sought those positions as they saw their participation being taken seriously.

“We just continuously push so that we co-opt them onto our council committees,” she said.

For the UCCI students, the issue was whether Cayman’s existing opportunities went far enough.

They discussed student leadership, election forums and parliamentary-style discussions, but questioned whether young people should have to wait for an election period or a special event before their views reach policymakers.

The demand was for something more consistent.

Baroness Shaista suggested that Cayman might need a mechanism through which young people's views could be gathered and fed into government on a regular basis.

“Maybe even if you don’t have a specific ask, maybe it’s actually we need a mechanism,” she said.

She suggested that government could consider regular surveys of the student or wider youth population, with the results feeding into policymaking.

The value of such a system, she said, would not necessarily be that government accepted every recommendation.

It would be that young people could see where their views entered the process.

That distinction ran through the discussion.

Reverse mentoring puts young people on the other side of the table

The group also discussed reverse mentoring - the idea that younger people can help older generations understand the issues affecting their generation.

For the students, it was a two-way process.

“It could be a collaborative effort. It should be a collaborative effort where people are just learning from each other and just making everything better,” one participant said.

That approach challenges the assumption that expertise always moves in one direction.

Older policymakers may have institutional experience, while younger people may have a more immediate understanding of the digital environment in which many current policy questions are playing out.

The point was not to replace one generation’s knowledge with another’s.

It was to put both in the same conversation.

Turning the discussion into action

As the session drew towards its conclusion, Williams challenged the students not to allow the discussion to end when everyone left the room. Her challenge was straightforward: identify one person to speak to, one person to influence, or one practical suggestion that could be taken forward.

“Let’s not leave it here,” she said.

Jewel Hydes, chief executive officer of the Caymanians First Charitable Foundation, also offered the foundation’s support.

Hydes told students that the foundation was prepared to work with UCCI and encouraged anyone needing assistance with programmes they were pursuing to reach out.

“So if any of you have any needs for any of the programmes that you’re doing, please feel free to reach out to us. We are more than happy to assist,” she said.

But Hydes also backed the broader call for a stronger route for youth participation.

“We no longer want to see your voices lost,” she said.

She said she would contact Goddard to begin coordinating further work.

Hydes described the discussion as valuable precisely because the group was small enough to allow people to speak openly while still producing a range of views.

That diversity was also welcomed by Baroness Shaista.

“I love the diversity of opinion,” she said.

She argued that if government listened to the different perspectives expressed in the room, it could potentially find a middle-ground solution that worked for more young people.

The challenge, she said, was finding the mechanism.

The students left without settling the debate over phones or social media.

That may have been the most important result of the meeting.

There was no single youth position to hand to policymakers. There were competing concerns about safety and freedom, protection and responsibility, enforcement and education.

But the students repeatedly returned to the same principle.

They want to be heard before decisions are made.

The test now is whether that demand becomes more than another discussion.

For the students, the issue is not whether every recommendation they make will be adopted. It is whether their ideas have a route into the process - and whether they can see what happens to them once they get there.

They do not want another conversation that ends when everyone leaves the room.

They want a way in.