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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

This mentality is why I almost failed higbschool. Boredom fails us who need to be constantly invested.

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.

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.