Updated May 2nd, 2025 at 4:45 p.m.*
-OpEd-
BOGOTÁ — Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently approved a law banning use of cellphones among pupils throughout the school day in public and private schools. Part of the law says the measure is intended to “safeguard the mental, physical and psychological health of children and teenagers.” The law also tasks schools with devising strategies to deal with mental health problems associated with use of the devices. In cases, they might be used but only for teaching purposes or to ease accessibility.
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The move is interesting, as it followed extensive consultations with technology experts, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers and politicians, parliamentarians and officials, and enjoys the backing of more than 80% of parents. Brazil’s Education Minister Eduardo Santana said “experiences worldwide have shown the harm in terms of attention deficit in classrooms due to cell-phone use,” but also harm done to “interpersonal socialization.”
Global impact of technology
Other countries have taken similar measures. They include the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Australia, Norway, China, Israel, Ghana, Rwanda and Uganda. In 2023, the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO published its Global education monitoring report: Technology in Education, A Tool On Whose Terms? in which it observed that certain technologies could aid learning in some contexts — but not if used in excess or inappropriately.
Finland is the latest country to join this group, having passed legislation this week that only allows phone use in class for healthcare or learning purposes. The changes will go into effect on August 1. It is an important milestone, because Finland consistently ranks near the top of the PISA global education rankings.
What are we waiting for before putting limits?
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt likewise writes in his 2024 book The Anxious Generation that youngsters are growing up without the interaction and social attachments of small communities in which most people evolved until recently.
This is part of a “great rewiring of childhood,” he writes — thanks to technology, but also a catastrophic parental tendency to overprotect and deprive them of autonomy in the real world.
Shared responsibility
The “phone-based childhood,” he writes, is producing social privation, lack of sleep, fragmented attention and addiction. He did not conduct his research in schools but does approve of cellphones or smartwatches being banned there.
In 2021, Colombia passed a law “whereby measures are set out regarding the use of technological tools in educational establishments,” though it has yet to be properly enforced nor has its implementation been checked on.
In 2024, 27 schools in Bogotá (the Uncoli, or Union of International Colleges of Bogotá) agreed to restrict use of cellphones and smartwatches for much of the day at school. Other private schools have followed suit since.
Cellphones really do need to be banned in school, and rigorously so. Yet we must bear in mind that this can only restrict or alleviate, not resolve, the problems associated with their overuse. There is also life at home, and without awareness of the social harm such devices can do, there can be no improvement in the physical and mental wellbeing of our minors.
We’re all responsible before this reality. The two questions to think about are: what are we waiting for before putting limits; and why, with so much evidence on the harm done by misuse of mobiles, tablets and the like, do we insist on looking the other way?
*Originally published January 27, 2025, this article was updated May 2nd, 2025 with news of Finland passing legislation to restrict phone use in school.
