French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a ban on mobile phones in upper-secondary schools (lycées) across the country at the start of the 2026-2027 school year.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday announced his desire to ban mobile phones in high schools “starting at the beginning of the next school year.”
“School is the place where you learn, and it’s the place where you communicate with other people,” Macron told the French press while discussing the dangers of smartphone and screen addiction in adolescents.
“We banned mobile phones in middle schools last school year, and we will undoubtedly extend this to high schools next school year. The education minister is currently looking into it,” Macron added.
French news outlet Franceinfo reached out to the Élysée Palace, which confirmed that the ban on phones in lycées was on the docket for summer 2026.
READ MORE: 5-day weeks, shorter classes and later starts: How France could change the school day
What’s the situation now?
Technically, phones have been banned in French primary and lower-secondary (collège) schools since 2018, but the law has been difficult to enforce.
As such, at the start of the 2024-2025 school year, France began experimenting with the Portable en pause (digital pause) scheme, which involved requiring pupils to leave their smartphones at the entrance of the building, in lockers, or in special briefcases or pouches.
This was rolled out across French lower-secondary schools in 2025, though it has not yet been implemented in all collèges.
As things stand, lycées (high school/ upper secondary) might have internal regulations prohibiting the use of mobile phones by pupils in ‘all or part of the premises’.
Efforts to crack down on screens
In spring 2024, a commission of French experts published a report after reviewing the impacts of screen time on children, with recommendations from TV bans for toddlers to blocking access to Instagram for under-18s.
READ MORE: How France plans to protect kids from too much screen time
More recently, on Tuesday, centrist MP Laure Miller from the president’s centrist party Ensemble pour la République proposed a bill aimed in particular at ‘extending the ban on the use of mobile phones to lycées, under the same conditions as in other educational establishments’.
And last week, MPs from Macron’s party introduced another bill to regulate social media use by minors, with one of the measures being banning social media for under-15s and suspending the accounts of younger children on the platforms.
In December, Australia will ban social media for children under 16, with platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok required to delete the accounts of underage users or risk fines of up to €27.5 million.
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