The wider digital context
The push for school phone bans is closely linked to growing concern about social media and online harms.
Evidence highlighted in recent global education monitoring, including the 2023 Gender Report, Tech on her terms, suggests that social media environments can expose young people, particularly girls, to risks such as harassment, unrealistic social pressures and harmful content. That report found that girls are twice as likely as boys to suffer from eating disorders exacerbated by social media usage. Facebook’s own research revealed that 32% of teenage girls felt worse about their bodies after using Instagram. The report further noted alarming trends related to TikTok’s algorithm, which targets teenagers with body image content every 39 seconds and promotes content related to eating disorders every eight minutes.
Emotional wellbeing is crucial for academic success. The impact of social media on the latter is particularly pronounced among girls. Increased interaction with social media at age 10 has been linked to worsening socioemotional difficulties as they grow older a trend not observed among boys.
As a result, some countries have implemented or are considering restrictions on social media use for children, including legislation in Australia, France, Portugal and Spain, as well as discussions in Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Indonesia.
