France to ban students from keeping smartphones in schools

I can't believe it wasn't like that since the beginning.
How is it not one of the many distracting things they would ban immediately?
- I think it has to do with the Columbine school shootings.
  
  We're talking about France here.
  And they still have phones in school in a lot of other coutries.
- Some definitely tried. I got suspended in middle school because I forgot to turn my phone on silent and it went off in class. They had a "zero tolerance" policy, so it didn't matter that it was an accident

Make school fun and not a prison and then kids don't need phones like their office worker parents do.
- Doesn’t matter if the teacher is an absolute gem and knows how to captivate kids who want to learn. Most kids prefer the dopamine hit from social media and other phone usage compared to actually learning. It just ruins it for kids who actually want to learn.

We didnt have any kind of phone when we were in school
- I had pagers.
  
  Except I was not born yet when pagers were a thing

Stupid. Kids are more informed and hooked into current events than ever before, specifically because of phones and the Internet. Hell, half of most peoples' jobs are looking up reference material online. You want kids to succeed, hand them a big list of the best places to look for the answers and let them use their phones on the test.
- A good reason for banning smartphones is social media addiction. Not internet searching. Its currently normal for 12 year olds to be on their phone 6-12 hours a day. And because of peer pressure parents can't do anything about it. A kid without a phone is isolated because everything happens in chat and social media.
  There are more thorough solutions like age gating social media but a blanket school ban is a good start. If you still don't believe me you should really read up on what smartphones do to a kid. Addiction, lack of self control, no attention span, nearsightedness, the list goes on. Based on leaked research by TikTok itself btw.
  In China they don't destroy their own kids because they already know the effects. TikTok shows different stuff there (educational content and propaganda), and kids are limited to 40m(!!!) per day. Everyone is going to deal with scores of fucked up kids while they don't.
  
  They also use their phones a lot to harass each other, they can film, and take pictures of any other kid at school and post it online to harass them. Bullying has been really increasing thanks to phones in schools.
  
  China limits social media because they repress free speech and political association. TikTok and other social media was a huge part of why there was such an outcry over the invasion of Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. They doubly limit what kids can see because students are often hugely influential in political activism - especially in China, where students were an integral part of both the revolution(s) and Tiananmen Square. China's gov is pants-shittingly terrified of another student-led revolution/crisis/etc and keep a very close watch on what the kids are saying and seeing.
- Even though it's easier to find information than like 30 years before, kids nowadays do NOT look for news or some other "sensible" information. They watch stupid TikTok videos and things like that (yes yes, there's always some exceptions). Smartphones has become a big problem in schools. You would know that if you followed the news.
- Kids have no clue how the internet works for actual research. They just endlessly scroll and gobble up all of the Nazi bullshit that's spread around. The internet is dead. Smartphones are highly efficient propaganda gadgets.

I mean... fine? France always does things kind of top-down and there's certainly no reason you have to have your phone readily available, and plenty of evidence it's good to be away from it.
It's not like they need to get to their phones to tell their parents there's an active shooter on campus. 😐
- Tragedy in a French school:
  “Maman! Maman! Ze school is out of baguette and fromage! Please come pick me up! I am about to le faint!”
  Disgusting.

We've had a similar ban in the Netherlands for a year or two now. Mobile phones were already not allowed in classes. Kids seem to have survived.

Good, you don't need smart phones in school
For anyone screeching that you do: No. You don't.
We've been without smart phones for millenia, literally, and we were fine without. You will be fine without.
- For anyone screeching that you do: No. You don't
  I have a feeling that you haven't gone to school recently lol
  Educational resources are blocked that you literally cannot do your assignments without accessing. Teachers will tell you to use your phone to access it.
  If you have some questions for someone who is actively in highschool right now, I'd be happy to answer :)
  edit: tone
- I wanna preface this with I had a small keyboard slide phone in school, not a smart phone by today's standards, but I am firmly against this archaic mentality.
  It doesn't address the elephant in the room, classrooms have become painstakingly boring. There is no real incentive for the student to actually do well anymore, or even pay attention. This is exclusively for the k-12 system though, as the issues seem to have become non-existent entering the college and university system. I went from being a solid D/C student in high-school to being an A/B+ student going into college
  I spent my time in grade school fucking around and barely paying attention, this was without a smart phone. I couldn't keep focused on the class subjects, and so therefore I gave up. The college system has the process down-packed, it's laid back, not hours on end in a row learning useless shit you won't need, and you have the freedom to either listen or don't, there isn't the constant pressure from professors "You are failing you need to do better" like in high school. Plus the professors seem actually happy to be there and they make the content more enjoyable, its not just droning on and on on a subject.
  The only things removing a phone from a classroom is going to do is remove a potential learning tool, and just annoying your students even further. If your student doesn't want to learn, removing items isn't magically going to make the kid learn. Make it entertaining, do something OTHER than this stupid info cram shit where you just regurgitate information constantly. There is zero incentive on almost every subject you learn to actually want to learn it. You don't learn any type of life skills, you don't learn anything for your career/future. Hell they don't even teach cursive anymore. My sister couldn't even read a physical clock entering 7th grade. They don't teach it. But you can bet things like "what happens in the 16th century" will be taught, or what basic cell structure is (I couldn't tell you, I forgot all that info leaving that class room).
  Like I get needing to know history, and basic mathematics, but the current schooling system is a overburdened plug of useless information for society. Everyone knows it, everyone lies to their kid saying things like "yea you will definitely need to know what beware the ides of march means in life". If things were taught that people knew would be useful in life (or at the very least explained HOW it would be), and it wasn't just a professor saying "ok class open your book, this is the lesson" for 3/4 of the year, you might have a better student attention span.
  
  We oughtta send the kids to the mines again, god forbid they might discover something they never knew they'd like studying at school.
- Type 1 diabetics would like a word.
- we didnt have clean drinking water either, or daily showers, we lived without soap for millenia
  
  Lol, we definitely have had clean drinking water for far longer than we have had dirty drinking water, thank the industrial revolution for that. And try skipping a shower for a day - you'll be fine. Soap also has a long history https://www.soaphistory.net/soap-history/ over 4000 years
  So literally wrong on all three points. Perhaps you need to read more instead of doom scrolling and swapping nudes on your smartphone
- We've been without a lot of things for millennia
- For me school was a great way to learn almost nothing of any use while occupying 11 years of my life with pointless time filing busywork that I hated every hour, minute and each and every eternal second of of. The only thing worse than school has been work and my consolation is that at least it's not forever!
  
  And yet here you are writing English.
  You take what you've been given for granted.
  
  You wish you would have been home schooled?
  To be honest I'm disappointed we haven't seen more progress into "VR schools" yet. Where you are fully submerged into a learning experience. While your blood is constantly analyzed and drugs to increase concentration and energy levels are dispensed. Ok maybe not the last part.
- Yeah who needs the wheel either? We survived 450,000 years without it. And don't get me started on paper. Paper can be used to make paper airplanes or spitballs. What a distraction! Kids should chisel their assignments onto stone slates like our ancestors did.
  
  If wheels could brainwash a kid, completely distract them, and make them throw a tantrum when you take it away then we might have to worry about them.
  
  No, you're being facetious. Go sit in the corner.
  
  I understand the paper, but why do they need wheels? Why are you leaving out guns?
- People werent fine either, why dont you just google 911 calls from kids and see how many would have been better off without phones

Brazil did it a while ago. Nobody died [yet]
- Brazil and nobody dying, what kind of propaganda is this?
- That you know of
- Some kids have medical issues and need a phone to monitor their health or text family for advice and help since they may be young. It's also nice to track the kids with their phone when they're walking too and from school.
  
  We did not even have dumb phones … somehow we still survived …
  
  Right. Kids used to die like flies back in the day when there were no smartphones.

Does anybody but me remember when schools banned walkmen? What about portable CD players? Gameboy? This happens everytime a new technology becomes popular and schools don't know how to regulate it they do this.
The downside is, a fair few student will have their phones confiscated by the school. But it won't dissuade them from bringing them in. You make them better at hiding them instead of creating tools and protocols to enforce for when they can and can't use them.
The crazy thing is, this should be about schools not wanting to be liable for or responsible for these pieces of tech. But Everytime I see legislation like this, it's to do with "children's mental health", or these devices being a distraction.
Model it. Nobody should be allowed to have a phone in schools by this metric. No phones for students? No phones for teachers and administration.
- If they have to hide their phones now, they won't be using them as much, which is The end goal.
  You might be living proof that not using tiktok does not necessarily make you smart, I'll give you that point.
  
  They already had to "hide the phones". Literally France already passed a law stating that phones aren't allowed in elementary and middle schools for students. Those phones previously had to be kept in a backpack or pocket and weren't allowed to be used on the premises.
  This new law does one singular thing, so far as I can tell (which isn't made clear in either of the articles I read). It actually actively makes students surrender phones at the beginning of the school day and locks those phones away in a centralized location the students don't have access to.
  The problem with that is what I have been saying in subsequent comments. There are protocols in place for what happens when a student breaks the rules. But A. They mention nothing at all about how they will know a student is carrying around a phone in their pocket or using it in the bathroom. And B. they mention nothing about the repercussions for skirting such rules and regulations.
  Additionally, if this is about student mental health (as they claimed), it does absolutely nothing to teach them about the dangers of cell phones, nor does it even remotely teach them to moderate cell phone use.
- Yeah I think the adverse effect of handing an iPhone to a 10 year old in Atlanta, when that teen is still highly impressionable unrestricted and unsupervised access to the internet is far worse than handing a kid a Gameboy on which they can only game, or a Walkman on which the worst thing they can do is listen to Cardi B.
  
  And the fault of the parent who is the only one who can do anything about that child having unrestricted access to the internet of a phone. This is adding to the responsibilities and liabilities of the schools without solving the problem in a meaningful way and this is exactly what I'm being critical of in my statement.
  If nobody has a phone you can implement other technologies to alarm if such a device is brought into the property etc. You can actually jam cell phone use in the area too. There's solutions that would mitigate a school having to take on hundreds of confiscated $1000 phones which would be a huge liability and make them a target.
- Does anybody but me remember when schools banned walkmen? What about portable CD players? Gameboy?
  Except none of these things were feeding Andrew Tate or Joe Rogan garbage straight into their highly impressionable skulls.
  I, for one, support the banning of phones in schools. The social media addiction has been shown to cause depression, particularly in girls, and the brainwashing is ever more apparent.
  If anything, this policy fails by not going far enough. I question whether kids should have access to social media at all before a certain age.
  
  What's your point? Are you banning the entire Internet?
  All this stuff is still accessible once the bell rings and before they get to school, just like it was when I was a kid. Kids were still going on YouTube/MySpace/ Facebook and more to share things. This argument doesn't make sense.
  You're attributing the issue of algorithms to the medium itself.
  
  Rush Limbaugh was broadcast on the free radio, you could listen to it on $1 worth of junk parts if you knew what you were doing. The ease of access is not what made republican bigotry accessible or popular.
  
  And that is the fault of the parents who chose to hand phones to these kids. It is not the fault of the school, nor is it something the school should have to do anything about. (Edit for clarification: what I meant by "so anything about it" was schools aren't responsible for teaching good and responsible phone use and self control, nor is it their job to step in when the parent is doing their job with teaching these skills).
  I'll also point out the argument that there was a push back then for outlawing video games and violent music because of its effect on young children and regardless of the validity of the danger to kids, it's still the fault of parents who were allowing their children to listen to that music or play those games. Schools already likely have policies about cell phones, or at the very least policies about confiscating distractions.
  You seem to have taken this as not support for banning phones in schools rather than what it really is. A criticism of this method for the deficiencies that it creates without solving the problem or even (more than likely) changing anything about the protocols already in place for handling distractions in schools except potentially creating a worse situation for the administration who have to now be responsible for these items en masse because students and parents are going to ignore this until it hurts them personally.
  It also doesn't teach students anything at all about moderation or the dangers of the internet, nor does it teach them anything about this tech which they will end up having to use as adults. And if you have seen adults with this tech you know it's not just a danger to kids.
- I remember when people didn't have phones on them 24/7 and kids didn't die and parents could call the school if they needed to talk to the kids. Somehow we survived.
  
  Well the #1 reason US parents want their kids to have phones is because so many kids die in school shootings and parents have a need to be able to get ahold of their kids.
  That's the #1 reason, no matter how illogical it is
  
  And a bunch of people didn't but we don't talk about them, it was the norm back then.
- About 'better at hiding them'; maybe so; but that will largely be down to how the rule is enforced. Some schools basically just say "please don't carry your phone. Put it in your locker." In those schools, basically every student has their phone in their pocket. Whereas other schools are more strict about it. The phone can be confiscated on site, and in some cases require the parent to collect it. In those cases, compliance goes way up.
  As for 'no phones for teachers and admin'; unfortunately, some of the jobs and responsibilities of teachers are done using a phone. Teachers are required to carry a phone during yard-duty, for emergency purposes. And teachers often use their phone to mark class attendance rolls. ... But its definitely a bad look when a teacher is walking down a school corridor staring at their phone while student phones are banned.
  As for the reasons for the ban... well, they are many and varied - including all of the things you mentioned. (liability, mental health vs bullying in particular, and distraction from class activities.)
  
  Are they going to allocate money to every school to employ technologies to prevent cell phone usage on the premises? Unlikely because, as I said, this law is to prohibit students from having cell phones, not teachers or administration.
  So what happens when a school now has to confiscate and hold $1000 phones en masse? It makes them a target for theft. It makes them a target for lawsuit in the event that any of those phones are misplaced, stolen, damaged etc.
  Teachers and admins didn't used to have cell phones in schools either. What are they doing on a phone that they can't use a landline and a computer for? Why is a cell phone so important for yard duty? Why is it a requirement? What does the cell phone do that a landline can't do?

What's funny is all the rich tech elite send their kids to schools that don't use tech to the same degree as public schools. Wonder why.
- Because personal tutors are engaging directly with the student the whole session?
- Probably because elite schools have smaller class sizes or teacher/student ratios thereby making it less necessary to have the ability to disseminate information via mass means with technology. Put it all up on a big screen where 30 kids can see it, send the assignments out to 120 kids via google classroom on school issued chromebooks (because there are plenty of kids from families that cannot afford computers), and do all the grading and review digitally. I’d be willing to bet those expensive private schools use plenty of tech, maybe kids carry Macbook Airs instead, but there’s no escape from tech in schools.

Good on you France!
I hope more countries start realizing how important this is. We have more than enough evidence demonstrating the damage that comes from being permanently connected, or even online for more than a couple hours per day, and minors are taking the worst of it because they are developing under those conditions.

I'm still not convinced that this is the answer to helping kids concentrate & learn more in school.
- there is no "the" answer but it can be part of an answer.
- I think it is fine but we also need lessons to properly interact with the technology. Scams, fraud, disinformation and checking sources were handled very abstractly at best and archaic at worst.
  
  Gen alpha is significantly worse than prior generations on tech. Them having their phones on them doesn't teach them, they consume on the lowest level. They don't learn the actual Internet skills prior generations had to to survive.
- I do sometimes think there is a bit of hand-wringing that happens where people glom onto the most visible sign of changing times and blame it for things that probably aren't as different as the adults think, but by the same token most schools in richer countries have screens everywhere with school-related interconnectivity and even tools that are not unlike social media.
  I see very little downside here, even if it may not result in some magic rebirth of older forms of social interaction. It seems like the major benefit from the French pilot programs was "improved atmosphere," in which case it's still better than nothing. Having a period when kids are learning to deal with small-group dynamics is not a bad thing, and neither is taking "dealing with phone bullshit" off the teachers' plates.
- It is. Phones are the #1 distractor in school
  
  Boring lessons are pretty big distractors. I seen kids fall asleep and daydream long before smartphones were even a thing. Make learning fun and the kids will engage. Confiscating their possessions is a hostile move that never goes down well.
  
  Dude, it's been 2 centuries, take a hint

Good. Boredom is the key to learning. Well it should be interesting on it's own, but take what you got.
Of course the manner of learning in most schools is not ideal, kids find it boring for a reason, but without distraction they might latch onto some bits of information just to survive the class.
- This mentality is why I almost failed higbschool. Boredom fails us who need to be constantly invested.
  
  Yeah, different education methods should be used for different learning capabilities. I'm thankful my teachers in elementary school quickly learned that as long as you kept me busy with new info or math problems I would be happy.
- Maybe if school wasn't 95% time filing garbage and busywork. I'd take a crashcourse video over what they served in school any day and hour of the week.
- Boredom is the key to learning something it's just very likely that it won't be the thing school is trying to teach. Especially if the thing school is teaching is the thing boring you.

Maybe you should fix the systematic problem instead of doing surface level fixes that impact the freedom and mobility of minors.
- This is solving a systematic problem. The problem of social media companies having free reign to make kids addicted. This will give french kids more freedom to think and do actual things with their life.
- Taking away their addictive propaganda gadgets is freedom, lol.
- Wouldn't no phomes increase mobility since parents cant trqck their location

le tiktok

The cover image for this piece smells AI generated
- Eh, checking out the source (Drazen Zigic via Getty Images), he seems legit.
- https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/group-of-teenagers-using-mobile-phones-in-hallway-at-high-school-gm1500076836-521623716
  I suppose it is possible the submitter used AI uncredited, but I doubt it. For one thing, there are other images of the same models in the artist's page. Second, the state of AI image generation when this was submitted (June 2023) was pretty terrible for things like this.
  More likely is that the image "looks like AI" to you because most image generation models were trained on Common Crawl, which includes at least tens of thousands of curated (royalty-free) images. In other words, AI models generate images that look like stock photos because that is what they know how to generate.

See everyone, It's not just us Americans! The French are doing stupid things too!
It's a joke, don't write in.

That’s a good way to keep children from documenting and reporting abuse.
- Maybe normalize bringing a camera then? Photography is not banned.
  
  The phone is a camera and more.
  Seriously admit the problem is teachers can’t control the class not ban the only lifeline kids with only one parent who works has.
- Get real bro. Phones are a massive distraction in the classroom.
  
  Two things can be true
  
  Surveillance for me not for thee.

That's ass. Just don't allow use during class.

So schools would suddenly become rehab treatment centers ? What a freaking timeline.

Easier to kidnap
- Because famously, kidnappers give you that one phone call opportunity...
  
  famously both android and ios have (default to iirc?) a "feature" which dials the emergency number by repeatedly pressing the power button.