Czechia moves to ban mobile phones in schools from September 2027

Actually effective way to protect kids without massive societal consequences and it also improves learning.

German here. Have a kid in elementary school and one in middle school. No phones allowed whatsoever. But to be fair: every school in Germany can decide that for themselves. But when we were choosing schools, all schools had similar rulesets. Some event prohibited smart watches.

Plenty of Palo Alto parents seem to want basically what Czechia appears to be doing:

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/palo-alto-schools/2026/07/10/...

https://www.fournorms.com/campaigns/petition-for-intentional...

https://www.schoolsbeyondscreens.com/reform-proposals

We were told no phones in schools. I used my phone. They confiscated it for 2 weeks. I was like yeah fair enough.

I don’t understand why this isn’t done now?

I don't understand the legislative pushes for some of these things.

Schools can already say "no phones during instructional hours". Many of them do. I guess legislating it can mandate the policy across a school district, state, country etc., so perhaps that makes sense.

But others call for outright bans for kids, all the time. Parents can also restrict usage or set rules for appropriate use. Many do.

Do we have any actual evidence that this significantly improves things?

For example, can we expect Czech PISA scores to go up by 50 points from this change?

Or is this one of those "it feels like it should be good, therefore it's good"? Or maybe "we asked a bunch of people whether they think it's good and they said yes"?

You've got to remember that measures like this are limiting people's freedoms, so they need to provide measurable improvements.

This doesn't go far enough, in my opinion. I think all screens should be banned from schools. No TV, no phones, no projectors, no slides. No shortcuts for anybody, no distractions. Everything handwritten. I know this sounds like I'm sarcastically criticizing phone bans but I'm serious.

(Edit: obviously will need some accommodations for disabled students, and computer labs will have to exist for technical literacy classes.)

Ban social media for anyone under 18 while you're at it

Seriously, why isn’t this implemented everywhere?

Workplace next!

At the same time as a lot of other countries.

Don't they have more important issues to tackle?