Confessions of a telco head: Why 2026 must be the year we cut the cord

As we kick off 2026, my team and I are doing what every brand and communications team does in January: forecasting trends, setting targets, and analysing the "stickiness" of our digital ecosystem. My professional world is built on these metrics. I spend my weeks strategising how to deepen connection, celebrating when data consumption goes up and churn rates go down.

But when I clock off and go home to my two boys, aged five and 11, I live a professional paradox.

As we prepare for the new school year, I am looking at the shift towards phone-free zones in Singapore secondary schools, and I am not thinking about the lost engagement hours. I am breathing a massive, chest-loosening sigh of relief.

It is a strange duality to live with. I help build the digital highway, but I am terrified of letting my own children drive on it.

The peace of the pager era

I grew up in the Singapore of the 90s. The "pager era". Many of us remember the clunky Motorola strapped to our waistbands. If it beeped, I had to find a coin phone. It was inconvenient. It was slow. It was full of friction.

But looking back, that friction was a blessing.

As a teenage girl then, technology was utilitarian. It was for logistics ("Come home now" or "Meet at Dhoby Ghaut"), not for validation. My pager didn't judge my appearance. It didn't serve me a feed of parties I wasn't invited to. It didn't quantify my social worth with a 'like' count. When I put it away, the noise stopped. Today, the device in our pocket is not a tool; it is a portal. And for the "Anxious generation", a term coined by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, that portal never closes. 

The "Great rewiring": A mum’s nightmare

Haidt argues that, in 2010, our world underwent a "Great rewiring" of childhood, moving from play-based to phone-based.

As a mother of two young boys, I read the research with a specific kind of dread. Haidt notes that while girls tend to spiral inward (anxiety, depression), boys tend to withdraw outward. They retreat into the virtual world of gaming and forums, pulling away from the friction of the real world.

I see the pull even now with my 11-year-old. The battle to get him to look up, to engage, to handle boredom without a screen is constant. If he carries a phone in school this year, recess won't be a time for kicking a ball or navigating complex friendships; it will be just another session of head-down withdrawal.

The "do more" pressure cooker

However, whenever this topic arises, the pushback is predictable. I see it even in the comments on my own LinkedIn feed. The arguments are well-meaning but heavy with expectation: Parents just need to do more. You need to understand the parental control settings better. You should be 'co-gaming' with your children to guide their usage.

To that, I have a simple confession: We are tired.

Policing screen time in a hyper-connected world is a full-time job. It is an exhausting, daily battle of negotiation and conflict. Being told to "co-game" or master complex admin settings feels like just another KPI added to the endless list of modern parenting duties.

When schools create phone-free zones, they aren't "babysitting"; they are creating a sanctuary. It means that for 6 to 8 hours a day, I don't have to be the "bad guy". The environment does the heavy lifting.

This doesn't mean we ban tech entirely, my boys can still have their hour of gaming time at home. But because the school takes the "morning shift" of digital detox, the "evening shift" at home becomes manageable. We applaud the school for being the village that helps us raise them.

Redefining brand purpose in 2026

This brings me back to my desk. In the admarcomms industry, we talk endlessly about brand purpose.

For the last decade, the answer to "How do we delight the customer?" has been "give them more". But looking at the landscape in 2026, I ask you:

Is the definition of brand purpose is shifting?

The next frontier isn't performance; it's trust. If we are honest, the "dark side" of the technology we sell is that it has monetised our children's attention spans. If we optimise for engagement at the expense of mental health, we are not building a sustainable customer base; we are burning them out.

Real brand purpose, from a leadership perspective, is recognising that technology is a given, but it shouldn't be a tyrant. It is recognising that "delighting" a customer sometimes means protecting them from the product itself.

The resolution

Supporting phone-free schools isn't anti-tech. It is pro-human. By removing the phone during school hours, we are forcing our kids to learn social dynamics the hard way - face to face, without a screen to hide behind. We are returning a little bit of the "pager era" peace we grew up with - where you could be connected, but you weren't held hostage by the network.

I want to sell the best connectivity in Singapore. But as a mother, my hope for 2026 is that the most valuable thing our schools give my sons is the permission to disconnect.

This article was written by Lynette Poh, head of marketing communications at Singtel Singapore. The views expressed are her own.