French high schools struggle to implement mobile phone ban

French high schools are rushing to put in place a ban on mobile phones this week as Emmanuel Macron pushes for children to spend less time in front of screens.

Education unions warned that banning mobile phone use in lycées – where children are aged 15 to 18 – would be hard to implement quickly.

Macron approved the high school phone ban this month after another measure he had hoped would be a key legacy, his proposed social media ban for under-15s, was knocked back as unconstitutional.

The text of the social media ban is being rewritten in the hope it can be pushed it through before Macron leaves office in May.

France has already banned children from using mobile phones in primary schools and in middle schools, or collèges, which are attended between the ages of 11 and 15.

The government’s focus is now on banning mobile phone use among older teenagers at school from September, as it argues that too much screen time is harming children’s development.

In order to enforce the hurriedly signed-off ban, high schools must amend their rules – a lengthy process – and many schools have said they will struggle to implement the measure swiftly.

“It’s impossible to put this in place from scratch from 1 September,” said Jérôme Fournier, the national secretary of the SE-Unsa trade union. “Schools will need to change their internal regulations and that requires a full consultation process and a vote, and for high school students to be consulted. So we need time for everyone to meet and work on this.”

Fournier said a key challenge was that high school students were often obliged to rely on school smartphone apps to find out even the most basic information for the school day, such as timetables, room changes and homework. “Some even have to use apps on their phones as a badge to enter the canteen to eat lunch or to borrow books from the school library,” he said.

Fournier said high schools often hosted students for higher education courses or apprenticeships, some of whom were aged 20 and needed to use their phones for their work.

He said the key issue for each high school was to decide where exactly to enforce the ban, whether across the whole school, including corridors, or with exceptions such as in the playground. He said teenagers could be tempted to leave the school grounds in order to use their phones on the street outside, which could have implications for security and road safety.

Fournier said students should be consulted on the process rather than being treated as children. “These older teenagers are pre-adults – some in their final school year are going to vote in the upcoming presidential election,” he said.

Macron’s office has said he has no plans to give up on his push to bar under-15s from social media platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat, and the government is working redraft the law.

France’s constitutional council recently struck down the first version of the law after concerns that its definition of social media was not specific enough. This meant a host of sites not generally considered social media but that allowed commentary or communication could be banned, amounting to a “disproportionate restriction” on freedom of expression.

The constitutional council also raised concerns about the privacy implications of putting in place an age-verification system for all users.

Valère Ndior, a law professor at the University of Western Brittany, said it was no surprise to legal experts that the law in its current form had been knocked back, and it would be a challenge to rewrite it. “For the moment, as a legal practitioner, I can’t see how it’s possible to strike a balance between European law and French constitutional law,” he said.