South Korea prohibits phones in school rooms nationwide

South Korea has adopted a bill prohibiting the use of mobile phones and smart devices during class hours in schools – becoming the last country to restrict the use of the phone in children and adolescents.

The law, which comes into force of the next school year in March 2026, is the result of a bipartite effort to limit dependence on smartphones, because more research indicates its harmful effects.

Legislators, parents and teachers argue that the use of smartphones affects students’ academic results and removes the time they could have spent studying.

The ban has its skeptics, including students, who wonder how it would work, its broader implications and if it approaches the deep cause of dependence.

The bill was convincingly sentenced Wednesday afternoon, with 115 votes in favor of 163 members present.

Most South Korean schools have already implemented a form of a smartphone ban. And they are not the first to do so.

Some countries such as Finland and France have prohibited smaller phones, applying restriction only to schools for young children. Others like Italy, the Netherlands and China have restricted the use of the phone in all schools.

But South Korea is among the few to devote such a ban.

Nowadays, children “do not seem to repress their smartphones”, explains Choi Eun-Young, mother of a 14-year-old child in Seoul.

They are not only children. Almost a quarter of the country’s 51 million people depend too much on their phone, according to a government survey in 2024. But this double figure more – at 43% – for those from 10 to 19 years old. And it has increased over the years.

More than a third of adolescents also say that they find it difficult to control the time they spend scrolling the videos on social networks. And parents fear that it will not bother everything they could do over time.

“When they go to school, they are supposed to study, but also to build friendships and participate in various activities. However, they cannot focus on these things,” explains Ms. Choi. “Even when they chat with friends, they quickly return to their phone, and of course it also interferes with learning.”

Some parents, such as Kim Sun, whose two girls are in primary school, are also worried about intimidation on social networks, where “children throw insults unthinkively hard”.

Cho Jung-Hun, an opposition deputy People Power Party who presented the bill, says that it was encouraged to act as other countries that have made similar movements. He says that there is “significant scientific and medical proof” that dependence on smartphones has “extremely harmful effects on brain development and students’ emotional growth”.

Although it prohibits the use of telephone during class hours, the law gives teachers the power to prevent students from using their phones on school premises. He also asks schools to educate students on the appropriate use of smart devices.

There are some exemptions. The bill allows disabled students or special educational needs to use assistance devices and allows use of educational purposes or in the event of an emergency.

Teachers, however, seem to be divided on the ban. Among the two main groups of teachers in the country, only the Korean Federation Conservative of teachers supported the bill, saying that it provides “a much firmer legal basis” to restrict phones in classrooms.

A spokesperson for the group said that, according to their internal survey, almost 70% of teachers had reported disruption in class due to the use of smartphones, some students “unable to control their emotions in the moment (when teachers restrict the use of the phone), swearing or even attacking teachers”.

The other group, Korean teachers and the union of education workers, said that he had no official position on the law – he said that some members feared that the law violates students to access their smartphones.

“In the current reality, students have no place where to meet friends outside of CRAM schools, except via Kakaotalk (a communication application) or Instagram, and they are constantly pushed to competition at school,” explains Cho Young -Sun, a high school teacher who believes that the bill targets phones rather than the real challenge that the students are confronted – the implementation of the notoriously competitive university entry.

Known as Sunneung, it is an eight hour marathon of consecutive tests that many Koreans believe that seals his fate. The score plays a major role in determining their university and, if they do, what it will be, and, in turn, decides their job prospects and their income.

Korean children are starting to prepare for the exam from their first school day. A 13 -year -old student, who did not want to be appointed, told the BBC that he simply did not have time to be addicted to his phone, because private tutoring sessions and homework after school generally maintain him after midnight every day.

“Rather than simply taking on phones, I think the first step should be to teach students what they can do without them,” said Seo Min-Joon, an 18-year-old high school student who spoke against the ban on smartphones.

The prohibition of phones during class hours does not make much, he maintains, because “the students would always be on their phones while making trips or lying in the bed at night”.

“There was no real education concerning healthy use, just confiscation.”