It's the schoolchildren and college students who are going to complain: the Government has announced its intention to ban smartphones on college grounds, but not only there, from the 2024 school year. Here's what you need to know about this drastic measure announced by the Ministry of National Education.
a growing dependence on screens
Anyone under the age of 30 today has probably already been subjected to a remark like “you can't live without your phone”, or “in our time we preferred to go out with our friends than spend our time on screens”. These ready-made phrases tend to annoy us, but they raise a real problem: our dependence on technology, and in particular on screens.Lots of studies and surveys demonstrate the negative impact that spending too much time on your smartphone can have.
It is therefore particularly important to protect young people from a very young age, but also during their adolescence. This is why the Government wants to set up a “digital break”, which should allow students to switch off their phones when they are at school. Thus, from the start of the 2024 school year in a few days, around 200 middle schools will participate in the experiment of a radical measure, which should subsequently become widespread.
smartphones banned in middle schools, but not only
Currently, the use of mobile phones and other “electronic communications terminals”is prohibited within schools and middle schools,as the official website of the Ministry of National Education reminds us. On paper, students are therefore not allowed to use their smartphones in these schools, and can only keep them on them if they are turned off. In reality, the situation is very different.
This is why the Government wants to take a new step by simply banning mobile phones in “nearly 200 middle schools” from the start of the 2024 school year, as announced at a press conference on Tuesday, August 27. The announcement was made by Minister Nicole Belloubet, who had explained a few months ago that students should deposit their smartphones in lockers provided at this effect.Thus, middle school students would part with their precious ones when passing through the gate of their establishment, and would only recover them after classes.
By the following, “the generalization of this digital break” would occur “from January 2025”in middle schools and primary schools, according to the Minister of National Education.