Belgium banned smartphones in schools… Did it work?

In September 2025, Belgian students went back to school with one thing missing: their smartphones. Just like in Australia, the Flemish government banned smartphone use during school hours.

After years of discussion about distraction, declining attention spans, social media, cyberbullying, and teenagers’ mental health, policymakers decided it was time to intervene. The solution sounds almost painfully simple: if smartphones distract students, remove them. Problem solved, right?

Well… We are now one year into Belgium’s smartphone ban, and researchers have started looking at what actually happened after we took the phones away. And, as is often the case with human behavior, the answer is a little more complicated.

First things first, what was actually banned and how?

Technically, there is no single Belgian smartphone ban (because this is Belgium, of course there isn’t). Education is organized by the different language communities, meaning Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia, and the German-speaking community each have their own rules.

In Flanders, smartphones have been banned in primary and secondary schools since September 2025. For younger students, the ban generally applies throughout the entire school day, including breaks. Students in the third stage of secondary education are at minimum not allowed to use them during lessons. Schools can still allow devices for educational purposes, medical reasons, or specific educational needs. Wallonia introduced a similar restriction on recreational phone use in schools, including during breaks and school activities, while still allowing educational and medical exceptions. The German-speaking Community also introduced a school-wide restriction covering lessons and breaks.

So, while the exact rules differ slightly, the general idea is pretty clear: during school hours, put the phone away. Policymakers have good reasons for that. Smartphones can distract us. Off-task smartphone and social media use is generally negatively associated with academic achievement, particularly when that use becomes problematic. But, just because there is a correlation, does not mean removing the smartphone will fix all our issues. Smartphone use can be distracting does not automatically mean that banning smartphones will improve students’ wellbeing, concentration, social relationships and digital habits. Those are different questions. Luckily, we recently got some Belgian data to help answer them.

So did students use their phone less?

Yes.

At school.

A research team from Ghent University, led by Marlies Van de Casteele and including Maarten Vansteenkiste, recently published the first evaluation of the Flemish smartphone ban. Instead of simply asking students whether they liked the ban, the researchers compared students before and after its introduction. They collected data during the second semester before the ban, followed students after its introduction, and compared pupils in equivalent school years.

The most obvious change happened exactly as intended: students used their smartphones less during school hours and breaks. So far, so good. Although there is one fairly funny footnote to that success: 62% of students admitted that they still secretly used their phone sometimes. But even more interesting is what happened after the final school bell rang. Students started using their phones more outside school hours, which evens out their total time spent on the phone. So in the end, they still use their phones as much as before the ban. It only changed when they use it.

Removing your phone is not the same as voluntarily wanting to remove it

Imagine I (your temporary supervisor at the office) take your phone away from you every day between 9 and 4. You would obviously use it less between those hours. Maybe you find that you quite enjoy being without it, or you become less dependent on it after a while. Or maybe you spend seven hours thinking about all the notifications waiting for you, grab it the second you walk out of the office, and spend the next three hours catching up.

The time spent on the phone during those hours may have changed, but your feelings around the ban and your relationship with your phone? That heavily depends on your own motivations. And that’s where the report got really interesting: the students may be spending less time on their phones during school, but their voluntary motivation, how convinced they were that the rules were a good thing, their feelings of ownership, and the way they viewed the teachers’ communication about it all took a nosedive.

In other words: compliance increased, but buy-in decreased. And that is a genuine issue, because while these less-motivated students may use their phones less when the teacher or parent is watching, they don’t have the motivation to control their use when nobody is policing them. The researchers actually found that lower-quality motivation and more controlling communication helped explain higher smartphone use outside school.

So if our goal is just no phones in school enforcement might be enough. If our goal is to teach teenagers healthier digital habits? That is a much harder problem.

So did it help them in some way?

This surprised me a lot. The smartphone ban was sold to students (and teachers) as a tool to focus better in class. However, the report showed that teens didn’t necessarily increase their class engagement. The (very small) differences they did find even went the opposite way, with kids saying they were more distracted than before the ban. And honestly, does that not make sense? Removing one piece of distraction doesn’t automatically make me more focused either. I can still think about lunch, my cats at home or the next blog I’ll write whilst in a smartphone-free meeting, trust me.

Another selling point was the students’ social lives, as in, removing the smartphone was surely going to make them talk to each other more. But, sadly, this didn’t happen. The students reported spending more time doing nothing, rather than talking more. Clearly, just removing the phone isn’t enough. We’d need to make being social (irl) easier, more attractive, and less scary for the kids.

The last selling point was their mental health. Removing smartphones would help curb cyberbullying, improve digital well-being, and so on. Smartphones and social media are often pointed at as the reason for declining adolescent mental health, but I’m afraid the academic debate on that topic is a lot messier than you might expect. School bans have even fewer studies, making conclusions difficult. A 2024 review found small positive effects on social well-being, but it was based on only 5 studies. The SMART schools studies in England found no difference in kids' well-being between schools with and without a ban. This report in Flanders has a similar finding: students did not report a positive change in their wellbeing. If anything, the small changes they did find go the other way: slightly more problematic use, slightly more cyberbullying, and slightly more distractions from their phone outside school hours.

So what now? Are we asking the right questions?

When the ban happened, most of the debate was centered around the question “Is a smartphone supposed to be at school?“. I think the real question here is “How can we teach our kids to navigate this increasingly difficult digital world?“. A ban could be one tool in a much bigger toolbox. This ban may give them a few smartphone-free hours, but the device and the platforms on it don't become less addictive when they come home. The researchers in the report also argue for a broader approach to media literacy, where we help young people recognize the risks of problematic use and find a balance in how they use their phones.

That’s a lot harder to do than BAN THE PHONES. It takes courage and patience from teachers, parents, and politicians alike. It takes money and time to figure out how to teach them well, and it also takes commitment from us all: why would teens stay off their phones if so many adults can barely manage to leave the thing at home? This issue is a lot bigger than the kids in school or the students at uni, we are all affected by it. The solution for better digital wellbeing for all of us cannot be outsourced to a rule or a ban, nor can it be found by trying to reverse time to the nineties. I am a sucker for nostalgia myself, but trust me (and a whole bunch of scientists): we will have to battle the platforms. On we go!