“I think banning smartphones from children is the right thing to do”

The call for a ban on smartphones in schools is becoming increasingly popular. The psychiatrist Manfred Spitzer from Ulm goes even further and denounces the harmful effects of digital media.
  Concerning school development, the federal states are focusing on the digital pact, on media skills and tablets. “You are only harming our children”, criticises the Bündnis Humane Bildung (Alliance for Humane Education) [see box]. More than 70 experts from the fields of education and medicine are urgently warning against continuing to focus on digitalisation in the educational system, and are calling for a change of course – for the benefit of the physical and mental development of children and young people. Manfred Spitzer, neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the University of Ulm, is also a member of the alliance. In this interview, Spitzer explains why media consumption can make us blind, why tech companies make us dependent and why digital learning creates educational injustice.

Dirk Grupe: Mr. Spitzer, Austria wants to ban smartphones in schools, and the Alliance for Humane Education is calling for the same measure in Germany. But is a ban not an exaggeration?
Manfred Spitzer: A few years ago, that was still the established view, but in the meantime things have changed. Australia even wants to ban smartphones completely for children under the age of 14, and I think that is a good thing. After all, the damage to health caused by smartphone use, especially among kindergarten and primary school children, is well documented by medical and scientific research.

What is this damage?
For example, the consumption of screen media leads to short-sightedness. And the younger the children, the greater this effect. We already have 1.4 billion short-sighted people worldwide. And by 2050, half of the world’s population will be short-sighted, i.e. 4.8 billion. In turn, short-sightedness is a risk factor for four other eye diseases, namely cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration and retinal detachment. And these are the four most important causes of blindness in old age. So when the government in Baden-Württemberg says we need more iPads in kindergarten, that means we will have hundreds of thousands more blind people in a few decades.

The smartphone is also said to be detrimental to children’s social behaviour. Do you agree?
Yes, of course, children bully each other. But above all, children sit alone in front of their smartphones, and so do the others around them. There have already been experiments in schools to do without smartphones completely, and these have brought about very positive results for social interaction. The children realise that using these phones is not actually good for them, and they do it just because everyone is doing it. And this is completely absurd.

In addition to smartphones, tablets are an issue in schools; in Bavaria, every pupil is to have one by 2028. Will this finally result in educational equality?
No, all studies show that the digitalisation of schools is particularly detrimental to weaker pupils. The educational inequality we have in Germany will therefore increase, not decrease, as a result of digitalisation.

Why is that?
Politicians from left to right claim that access to education is via a digital device so that everyone always has the world’s knowledge with them and everyone will learn something. The only problem is that weak students do all sorts of things with their devices, but do not engage in educational activities. The strong students, on the other hand, are curious and actually become a bit smarter. Digital devices in schools therefore make educational inequality worse, not better. And the digital industry is promoting this development.

Are you talking about the big tech companies?
That is so. Google, Facebook, Amazon and co. are the richest companies in the world. And they bombard us daily with their message: digital makes you smart, digital is great, digital is the future. That is why we need to start digitally as early as possible. This is not underpinned by facts, but represents lobbying.

And to what extent does this message have an effect on children?
The latest figures taken from the Postbank study show that the average use of digital media by children and young people is 72 hours per week. That is ten hours a day, with smartphones, games consoles, videos etc. In other words, ten hours of our next generation’s waking hours are given over to the richest companies in the world. And these are not interested in our children’s education or health but in their profits. This is irresponsible and an actual scandal. We are sacrificing the health of the next generation for the profit of a few billionaires. That is madness.

But can we not also benefit from digitalisation in education – after all, Pisa and other school tests have been coming out badly for us for a long time?
But they are bad because of digitalisation and not despite of digitalisation. That is the point.

Is there any proof for this?
Yes, a study in more than 50 countries that take part in Pisa has investigated how the Pisa data has changed over ten years. The result: the more countries spent on the digitalisation of their schools per pupil, the worse the performance of pupils became in those countries. There is therefore a negative correlation between the countries’ expenditure on the digitalisation of schools and the success of their pupils. In other words, the digitalisation of schools is detrimental to pupils’ learning.

But why exactly does anything digital deteriorate school performance?
It is quite simple. Digital media are extremely distracting. They lead to pupils being constantly distracted and unable to concentrate. And because of this constant distraction, they learn less.

But do we not also need to focus on media literacy in schools?
Media literacy is a word that suggests that there is a general ability to deal with media. But this general ability does not exist. You do not need googling skills to be able to google well. What you do need is prior knowledge. If you want to know something about Ming vases, for example, you need to know something about them beforehand. If you know nothing and google Ming vases, then you will not learn anything. It is our prior knowledge of facts that enables us to use media to learn more about these facts. Once again, there is no general competence that I can have in order to use media better. I need to know the button to turn it on and off, but that is pretty trivial.

And how do I acquire prior knowledge?
The best way to learn is that I ask someone and then they explain it to me. This has basically been the case since the invention of schools. The Sumerians invented writing. And when writing had been invented, it became clear that society would function better if everyone could read and write. So 6000 years ago, they started teaching reading and writing to children aged around 6 by having a teacher sit with five to seven pupils. And the teacher explained how to do it, the pupils then did it and asked questions. That is how school started, and that is how it still works best today.

So analog comes before digital, books before the internet?
Books are good, they are less distracting than digital media, where you keep clicking and clicking, and after five hours of clicking you have not really learned anything. I think, from an evolutionary point of view, humans are cultural beings, and culture also includes the passing on of cultural knowledge. And this passing on works from person to person. One person demonstrates it and the other imitates it. These are the parents, the peers, the siblings, the teachers. It has been like this for 100,000 years and it works very well. Of course you can also learn to play the guitar with YouTube videos. But a good guitar teacher is better.

Because we are social beings?
Yes, because we are social beings and because we can learn best from each other and with each other. I certainly do not deny that YouTube videos can help in countries where there is no education, where there are no schools and no money for teachers. But in this country, it is precisely those who are uneducated who do not use digital media for education, but waste their time with computer games, Instagram and other activities that take up a lot of time and prevent learning.

Opinions are also divided on artificial intelligence, but is it not also true that it opens up opportunities at school?
No. To learn to think, you have to think for yourself. If you say, “ChatGPT, write me an essay about the water content of Upper Hessian black pudding”, you are not thinking for yourself. Writing is above all a thinking activity, because our thoughts are often not linear and not even cast in language. When we put our thoughts in writing, it is a mental activity. And we do not learn to play football by watching it on TV. We have to play it ourselves! The brain is like a muscle, it grows with use.

In adults, the brain is fully grown and the smartphone is omnipresent. But what role do they play as role models for children?
A big role. Children do what their parents do. And parents should not be surprised if their children spend a lot of time on their smartphones, if their parents do the same. Parents need to know that they are role models for their children, and that in every respect.

Politicians are not sitting on the family sofa, but can they still do something?
Above all, politicians should quickly bury their Digital Pact 2 0 [see box], as it is now an anachronism beyond compare. In our neighbouring countries, digital media are currently being removed from schools – with good reason. We do not need a Digital Pact 2 0. What we need is the opposite.

So back to analogical learning in schools?
Yes, of course. It would be best not to introduce digital learning at all.

Bans are even more far-reaching – we talked about Austria and Australia, which wants to ban smartphones completely for children up to the age of 14. Is that not too much of a good thing, and can it be controlled at all?
I think it is the right step. We have also banned child pornography and drugs.

And who can control what someone does at home?
No one can control it, but we ban it anyway. If the state bans early smartphone use, it strengthens parents’ backs. Because then, if children want a smartphone for Christmas, the parents can say, “You know, that’s forbidden, you can’t get one.” Some people claim that you cannot ban a thing like that, that this is an expression of freedom of opinion. I would like to counter: If children are manipulated for ten hours a day, then that has nothing to do with freedom. The argument is flimsy. Therefore, there is a joint call, together with other scientists, for children to grow up unharmed by digital media into young adulthood. That is better for their physical, mental and health development. •

First publication: Schwäbische Zeitung of 13 March 2025;
https://www.schwaebische.de/regional/baden-wuerttemberg/kindern-samartphones-zu-verbieten-finde-ich-richtig-3403588;;
reprinted with kind permission

(Translation Current Concerns)