Six years ago, when officials at Calvijn College in the Netherlands began considering banning phones from their schools, the idea left some students horrified.
“We were asked if we thought we were living in the 19th century,” said Jan Bakker, president of the college, whose students range in age from 12 to 18.
Although the majority supported the idea, around 20% of parents, teachers and students surveyed were strongly opposed. Some were parents who worried about not being able to communicate with their children during the day, while a handful of teachers argued that it would be better to embrace new technologies rather than reject them.
Still, school officials soldiered on. “Walking through the hallways and the schoolyard, you could see all the kids were on their smartphones. There were no conversations, the ping-pong tables were empty,” Bakker said. “We were basically losing the social culture.”
Four years after Calvijn College became one of the first schools in the Netherlands to stop using smartphones, it is no longer an exception. As students return to classrooms across continental Europe, an increasing number of them will be forced to leave their mobile phones behind. In France, 200 secondary schools are trialling a ban, while French-speaking primary schools in Wallonia and Brussels, Belgium, have approved a measure that will allow them to stop using their mobile phones. advanced with its own prohibitions. In Hungary, a new decree requires Schools will collect students’ phones and smart devices at the beginning of the day.
Italy and Greece have adopted softer measures, allowing students to carry their phones during the day but banning their use in classrooms.
For those working at Calvijn College, the wave of radical change is exciting. From the moment they began requiring students to leave their phones at home or lock them away during the day, school officials watched the school’s culture transform.
“We basically got back what we had lost,” Bakker said. “Students are playing games and talking to each other. And there are a lot less interruptions in class.”
Other schools across the country began getting in touch, curious about the impact of the ban. In January 2024, the Dutch government entered the debate, urging schools to ban mobile phones, tablets and smartwatches from most secondary school classrooms across the country. The recommendation was recently Extended to primary schools.
Late last year, as secondary schools in the Netherlands prepared to follow the recommendations, researchers at Radboud University took the opportunity to take a before-and-after snapshot of the change.
They surveyed hundreds of students and parents, as well as dozens of teachers, at two schools with imminent plans to eliminate cellphones on school grounds, visiting the schools again three months after the ban was enacted.
About 20% of students reported being less distracted once they stopped using their smartphones, said Loes Pouwels, one of the researchers, while teachers described students as more attentive and focused on their classwork. “So I think in terms of cognitive functioning, overall it was a positive thing.”
Many students also reported that they had more real-life social interactions and that the quality of those interactions had improved. They also noted a reduction in cyberbullying as students spent more time offline.
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Three months into the ban, however, not all students had embraced the idea. Around 40% said not using their phones had allowed them to enjoy their breaks better, while 37% said they missed their phone. “I am forced to socialise when I am not in the mood, which is often,” one respondent told researchers.
At Calvijn College, officials have no doubt that the ban has been a positive. When it was first implemented, there was talk of allowing older students to bring their phones back into their school day.
The idea was dropped after the changes they saw, Bakker said. “That discussion is over. Nobody talks about it.”
Instead, there has been a quiet pride in knowing that when it comes to smartphones in classrooms, the school has been way ahead of the competition. “We went through a period where people said we weren’t a modern school, that we were going back in time,” Bakker said.
Today, the situation is the other way around, he added: “It is like a good confirmation that the problems we went through were not in vain.”