More than half of countries have introduced national bans on mobile phones in schools amid growing worries about falling attention in classrooms and rising cyberbullying, UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) team says.
The GEM team found that girls are twice as likely as boys to experience eating disorders worsened by social media. Facebook research cited in the report showed 32% of teenage girls felt worse about their bodies after using Instagram. The report also flagged troubling patterns linked to TikTok’s algorithm, which it says serves teenagers body-image content roughly every 39 seconds and material related to eating disorders about every eight minutes.
GEM data show 114 education systems now enforce a national ban on mobile phones in schools, representing 58% of countries worldwide. The rise has been rapid: when first tracked in the 2023 GEM Report, 24% of countries had bans; by early 2025 that figure rose to 40%, and by March 2026 it was almost 20 percentage points higher. A senior GEM official told PTI the expansion reflects mounting concerns about attention, cyberbullying and the wider digital influence on children, but cautioned that the global picture is more nuanced than a simple move to prohibition.
Several countries added national bans since late 2025, including Bolivia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Georgia, the Maldives and Malta. France, an early and widely cited adopter of restrictions (banning phones in primary and lower secondary schools), is debating tighter rules through a legislative proposal in parliament.
Policies vary. Many bans apply during the school day or inside classrooms, while some systems allow phones for educational purposes, exempt specific pupil groups (for example, students with disabilities or illness), or require devices to be switched off and stored. Other governments have opted not to impose strict national prohibitions but require schools to develop their own restrictive policies; examples named in the report include Comoros, Colombia, Estonia, Lithuania, Iceland, Peru, Indonesia, Serbia, Poland and the Philippines. In decentralized systems, measures often start at regional or local levels before spreading.
In the United States there is no nationwide ban, but 39 states have passed bans or rules compelling school districts to set limits on phone use; most remaining states have filed related bills. GEM stresses that emotional well‑being is central to learning and that social media’s effects are particularly marked among girls. Increased social media engagement from age 10 has been linked to worsening socioemotional difficulties as children grow older — a pattern not observed among boys.
Some countries are also considering or implementing restrictions on children’s social media access. Legislative or policy measures are under way in Australia, France, Portugal and Spain, and discussions are ongoing in Denmark, the Czech Republic and Indonesia.
