Valditara's proposal: 'Schools to be smartphone free'

"International analyses have shown the damage that smartphone abuse causes young people, which relates to the ability to concentrate, imagination, and memorisation. If we love our children, we must ensure that they take a break, at least at school, from smartphones so that they do not develop an addiction. Let's make schools smartphone-free environments'. So said Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara speaking at the conference 'Reading the present to write the future. The indispensable value of reading on paper and handwriting in cursive", promoted by the director of the Luigi Einaudi Foundation's Paper, Pen & Digital Observatory, Andrea Cangini.

Precisely at Valditara's request, the use of smartphones at school will be discussed in Brussels on 25 November. 'Many countries have already started to curb their use, especially for primary and secondary school children, as we have done'. Furthermore, he thundered, "the time has come to ban access to social networking sites for children under the age of 15. There is already a European directive that intervenes in this area, now we must arrive at user recognition'. The minister went on to specify that this 'does not mean rejecting technology', but that 'we must teach our young people to use digital tools correctly, as laid down in the Guidelines on Civic Education'.

During the meeting, Valditara debated with his Swedish counterpart, Lotta Edholm, who spoke about the model she had adopted in Sweden, a country that pioneered school digitisation, to stem the problem of falling pupil achievement, which many experts attributed to the excessive use of digital devices in schools. Recognising the irreplaceable importance of handwriting and reading on paper, in recent months the Swedish Education Minister has therefore preferred to backtrack and return to a traditional learning system based on the removal of tablets in kindergartens and the reintroduction of printed books and exercise books. "We overlooked the negative aspects of digitisation, especially on our children and their education," Edholm said. "Technology and digital create new opportunities, but we must not misuse them. In Sweden we think that digital teaching aids have too often been used uncritically and indiscriminately in many schools and that this has had a negative impact on pupils' learning."

The alarm bells rang in the face of the results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022, from which, the minister pointed out, "a strong correlation emerged between the use of smartphones by students and the decline in their school performance". Hence the conviction that "classrooms should be 'phone-free' environments because they are distracting for children" and that "students need more paper books to study on and return to writing with pen and paper, because these are necessary habits to fully acquire basic skills".

"Today, we have to adapt to a world in which digital culture dominates our children's lives, but we also have to be able to set boundaries," said US neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf. "Neuroscience shows us that, with deep reading, we develop and utilise essential faculties such as empathy, critical thinking, and reflective ability, and that handwriting helps the brain's motor networks to consolidate memory. We now have numerous studies and scientific articles showing that the greater the exposure to digital, the worse the academic performance of students."
Wolf in his speech outlined the results of a study conducted in 2019 by French neuroscientist Michel Desmurget that quantified the average time spent by children and adolescents on digital devices. According to the study, published in the book 'Screen Damage: The Dangers of Digital Media for Children', children between the ages of 2 and 8 spend an average of 20 per cent of their time on digital devices, about 2 hours and 45 minutes per day.
Children between 8 and 12 years old spend an average of 32 per cent, about 4 hours and 45 minutes, more than ten times the amount of time they spend on homework. While teenagers, age group 13-18, spend 45% of their time on digital devices, about 7 hours and 15 minutes per day.