School

France, no smartphones in secondary schools: they will be required at entry

New crackdown on devices at school: first results are positive for social interaction, ability to concentrate and exercise

by Enrico Marro

13 April 2025

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3' min read

Key points

France pioneers in the fight against smartphones
Experts: no social until 18
The Italian situation

3' min read

After the one in Denmark, a new clampdown in France on the use of smartphones at school. The Ministry of Education has announced the crackdown from September in middle schools (i.e. in the 11 to 15 age group): students will be obliged to lock their devices in a locker or a case when entering school buildings, only being able to retrieve them when they leave.

This enforced 'digital pause', as the French government calls it, has been tested in about one hundred secondary schools over the past six months, with children handing in their phones on arrival, placing them in a locker or box, or in a special lockable case.

'All the feedback from the trial is positive,' Education Minister Élisabeth Borne told the Senate, 'particularly with regard to improving the school atmosphere. There has also been enormous support from parents and teachers'.

France pioneers in the fight against smartphones

France is a pioneer in the fight against digital addiction of children and adolescents.

Already as of 2018, smartphones have been banned from elementary school and their use has been banned in middle school: they must remain switched off in backpacks and cannot be used anywhere inside the school, not even during recess.

The results were good: French middle school students increased social interaction and exercise, with improved concentration and less bullying. However, not a few students ran to the toilets during recess to watch videos on their smartphones during recess.

This is why the government now advocates taking a further step: separating children completely from their devices for the entire school day.

"At a time when the use of digital devices is widely questioned because of its many harmful effects, this measure is essential for the well-being and educational success of our children," Élisabeth Borne clarified.

'A young person today spends an average of five hours a day in front of a screen,' the Education Minister further explains, 'but only three a week with a book. All this damages cognitive learning processes and school performance'.

Experts: no social until 18

A report commissioned from a team of scientists and experts by French President Emmanuel Macron and presented last year concluded that children should not be allowed to use smartphones until the age of 13.

The use of social media such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat should be banned until the age of 18.

No child should have a phone before the age of 11, the report states, and in any case before the age of 13 should not have access to the internet.

The Italian situation

In our countrymobile phones have been banned from kindergarten and first-cycle school classes, also for educational and teaching activities, as of this school year (2024/2025). The difference with France is that the modality is left to the schools, i.e. no specific mode of management (e.g. confiscation, lockers) is imposed.

According to a recent study by Save the children, nearly one in three children between the ages of 6 and 10 (32.6%) use a smartphone every day, a trend that has been constantly increasing in recent years (in 2018-2019 it was 18.4%), with a nearly prevalence in the South and the Islands, where the share rises to 44.4%, more than 20 percentage points higher than the 23.9% in the North.