France is to trial a ban on mobile phones at school for pupils up to the age of 15, seeking to give children a “digital pause” that, if judged successful, could be rolled out nationwide from January.
Just under 200 secondary schools will take place in the experiment that will require youngsters to hand over phones on arrival at reception. It takes the prohibition on the devices further than a 2018 law that banned pupils at primary and secondary schools from using their phones on the premises but allowed them to keep possession of them.
Announcing the trial on Tuesday, the acting education minister, Nicole Belloubet, said the aim was to give youngsters a “digital pause”. If the trial proves successful, the ban would be introduced in all schools from January, Belloubet said.
A commission set up by the president, Emmanuel Macron, expressed concern that the overexposure of children to screens was having a detrimental effect on their health and development.
A 140-page report published in March concluded there was “a very clear consensus on the direct and indirect negative effects of digital devices on sleep, on being sedentary, a lack of physical activity and the risk of being overweight and even obese … as well as on sight”.
It said the “hyper” use of phones and other digital technology was not only bad for children but also for “society and civilisation”.
The report recommended children’s use of mobile phones be controlled in stages: no mobile phones before the age of at least 11, mobiles without internet access between 11 and 13, phones with internet but no access to social media before 15.
It also suggested children under three years old should not be exposed at all to digital devices, which it said were “not necessary for the healthy development of the child”.
“We must put the digital tool in its place. Up to at least six years old a child has no need for a digital device to develop,” Servane Mouton, a neurologist and neurophysiologist who was on the commission, said. “We have to teach parents once again how to play with their children.”
Banning phones in schools has long been debated across Europe. In countries where bans exist this is most often confined to their use and do not require children to hand them over.
In Germany there are no formal restrictions but most schools have prohibited the use of mobile phones and digital devices in classrooms except for education purposes. A quasi ban has been in place in Dutch secondary school classrooms since the beginning of this year, but as a recommendation and not a legal obligation. From this school year the directive will also apply to primary schools.
Italy was early to phone bans, introducing one in 2007 before easing it in 2017 and reimposing it in 2022. It applies to all age groups.
In February this year, the Westminster government issued non-statutory guidance that said schools in England should prohibit the use of mobile phones throughout the school day, but that it was for individual headteachers and leaders to decide on their phone use policy.
Portugal is experimenting with a compromise by introducing a number of phone-free days at schools each month, while in Spain schools in some autonomous regions have imposed a ban but there is no nationwide prohibition.
