France to ban students from keeping smartphones in schools

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. 😐

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.

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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
- 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?
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.

Brazil did it a while ago. Nobody died [yet]

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.
That you know of
Brazil and nobody dying, what kind of propaganda is this?

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.
It is. Phones are the #1 distractor in school
- Dude, it's been 2 centuries, take a hint
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.

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.

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 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

Maybe you should fix the systematic problem instead of doing surface level fixes that impact the freedom and mobility of minors.

Wouldn't no phomes increase mobility since parents cant trqck their location
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.

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.
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.

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.

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

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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.

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

See everyone, It's not just us Americans! The French are doing stupid things too!

It's a joke, don't write in.

le tiktok

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.

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

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.