As a school student in a school where phones are banned, I think this is a bad idea. The ban achieves 2 things for me:

1. Making it harder to check a fact or figure quickly.

2. Preventing me from listening to music, playing games or browsing the web uring lunch break.

It DOES NOT stop me from becoming disengaged from the class! If I'm bored, I'll look out the window, play with a calculator or something similar. And of course the ban hasn't stopped many students using phones anyway. Maybe phone bans don't solve the issue of uninteresting classes after all?

Yeah good luck with that... Even if it was agreed upon it is effectively unenforceable without resorting to essentially temporary theft as we see today, causing the students to hide their phones even better.

Phones like vapes in schools are there so businesses can profit by exploiting kids. The device hardware is powerful and potentially useful with the right software but the most popular apps are generally exploitative and potentially dangerous to mental health and privacy and because the industry uses dark patterns based on gambling to drive up engagement they are a distraction and reduce attention.

My kids have a lot of access to technology and the Internet at home. I am not opposed to them having phones when they show the right level of maturity and demonstrate a real need but they don't need them in class. Their school has had a phone policy for a long time which I support. Kids should have the freedom to be themselves at school and make mistakes without them being captured and spread via mobile devices.

I can easily go without using my phone for extended periods of time, and always have been. I've never really been "phone addicted", and never used my phone during class - despite having one for the entirety of my school years.

That still never stopped me from not paying any attention in class. Drawing on a book/desk, talking to the person next to me, looking out the window, or just spending time with my imagination were things I did too often, and I never needed a phone for any of it.

I seriously doubt banning phones would make much of a difference, other than pissing plenty of kids off. You're essentially being forced to go to a place, every day, where you will be stripped of your personal belongings and are not allowed to be in contact with the outside world.

Phone bad!!! But jokes aside phones are not the problem, the students don’t need a phone to distract themselves from studying. Banning them won’t solve a problem it would just be tach illiterate 60 year old padding themselves on the back for „getting those evil phones out of the classroom”.

I use my phone/laptop a lot in class too look things up. Like finding gifs of the stages of a beating heart, and generally, reading about the same topic being covered by the professor, but explained differently. It helps tremendously. That being said, there are certainly other people in any class that are on tiktok or whatever else and those people wouldn't pay attention with or without their phones. Take their phones away and they'll just distract themselves with something else. They don't want to be there and taking their phones away won't fix that; it will probably just make it worse.

This reminds me of the idea that violent video games causes violence; which they do, but only in people that are pre-disposed to behaving violently; and in those cases they're violent with or without the video games. It's the same with smart phones. They'll only distract people that are already going to be distracted. It's just a matter of what they're going to be distracted by.

The onus instead should lie with how the classes are delivered, and tangentially, how the entire system itself is funded.

Can they ban politicians from requiring tablets as an education tool? I don't see the point. If anything, they should use a computer instead. There's no point using a gadget sub-optimal for anything active learning.

I understand the logic that UNESCO is trying to make. However instead of a global ban on the device itself, ban the addictive parts of it. TikTok and most other corporate social media are designed to keep everyone, kids and adults alike as addicted to the platform as possible. Phones are still a valuable resource for a student, including being able to call in the event of an emergency or having access to maps or other things.

Ban the actual evil on the phones, not the phones themselves

they give 0 thoughts to what they say or are they just idiots?

Would be good for breaking some phone addictions, but good luck to the teachers that will have to deal with the withdrawls of the students.

I hate these kind of discussions. UNESCO released a report of over 400 pages full of research, recommendations, possible outcomes, etc. but here we are discussing just what people think when they hear "ban smartphones"

Tablets out, imagination in: the schools that shun technology (2015)

In the heart of Silicon Valley is a nine-classroom school where employees of tech giants Google, Apple and Yahoo send their children. But despite its location in America’s digital centre, there is not an iPad, smartphone or screen in sight.

If only it were doable.