Flemish Study Finds Side Effects of School Phone Bans

A year after Flanders banned smartphones in most classrooms, the first long-term study of its kind has found that the measure is largely obeyed — but has not reduced teenagers’ overall screen time and has produced no measurable gain in classroom concentration. The research, conducted by Ghent University (UGent) and highlighted in RTBF’s press review of 25 September, offers the clearest evidence yet of how such bans work in practice rather than in theory.

What the Study Found

Researchers surveyed roughly 3,500 young people across some 20 Flemish secondary schools, before and after the ban took effect at the start of the 2025-2026 school year.

The first finding is that the rules hold. “The new rules are well respected at school,” De Standaard reported, as summarised by RTBF — even if a majority of pupils admit to secretly using their phones from time to time.

The second finding is more awkward for policymakers. Despite the ban, teenagers spend just as much time on their phones as before, compensating for screen-free hours during the school day with intensive use afterwards — a pattern researchers call the “waterbed effect.”

The third finding directly undercuts one of the ban’s central promises. “The ban has no real impact on classroom concentration,” the study concludes. Pupils are, if anything, “a little more distracted without their phone.”

According to RTBF’s summary, teenagers themselves report “hardly any positive effects” of the ban.

Why Flanders Banned Phones

Flemish Education Minister Zuhal Demir (N-VA) announced the ban in December 2024, going further than her coalition agreement by extending it from primary schools to the first two grades of secondary education, and covering smartwatches and other smart devices. Exceptions apply for educational purposes, special needs and medical reasons, while schools set their own sanctions. As VRT NWS reported, Demir framed the move as “plain common sense,” arguing it would improve “concentration, school results and student well-being” and linking technology to rising depression, self-harm and anxiety. The French Community approved a parallel ban the same day.

The measure was contested from the outset. Both of Flanders’ main education umbrella bodies said most schools already had phone policies and had not asked for a top-down rule. The Flemish pupil council reported that 90% of secondary students opposed a total ban.

The Waterbed Effect, Predicted in Advance

The study’s headline finding was not entirely a surprise. In May 2025, media professor Lieven De Marez of UGent told Klasse that a ban would displace screen time rather than eliminate it: “The time they don’t have to check their messages or updates during the day, they probably just make up after school.” He still argued that “doing nothing was not an option,” citing Digimeter data showing that the share of 18-to-24-year-olds who felt they spent too much time on their phones had risen from 47% in 2019 to 68%, with 49% describing themselves as addicted and 75% saying they struggled with their use.

A Growing Body of Evidence Against Blanket Bans

The UGent results align with other recent research. In February, a KU Leuven team led by media psychologist Laura Vandenbosch found that strict total bans tended to raise depressive feelings and increase loneliness among vulnerable pupils, while partial bans were less harmful. A cyberbullying decline lasted only about a month. “A ban is no miracle solution — on the contrary,” Vandenbosch told VRT NWS, stressing the need for dialogue and student input.

Separately, a University of Birmingham study of 20 English secondary schools, covered by Metro, found little measurable difference in pupil well-being between strict and lenient phone policies — but calculated that strict schools saved roughly £94 per pupil per year in organisational costs. Its authors cautioned that the observational design could not prove the policy itself caused the difference.

What It Means

Taken together, the evidence suggests school phone bans change where and when teenagers use their phones more than how much, and that a ban alone rarely delivers the concentration and well-being gains its architects expect. Marlies Van de Casteele of UGent argued that the response should be media education rather than prohibition alone: schools, she said, should help students learn to use their smartphones “to make connections and acquire skills.”

The Flemish findings also inject evidence into a debate that has often run on intuition. Knack had already asked, months before the ban, whether a smartphone ban at school was worth it — a question that now has a partial, and uncomfortable, answer.

What to Watch

Flanders’ ban remains in force, and Minister Demir has not signalled a reversal. But the accumulating research, from Ghent, Leuven and Birmingham, points toward a more nuanced policy mix: limits during lessons combined with media-literacy teaching, dialogue and student involvement, rather than blanket prohibition. Whether Flanders adjusts its approach — and whether the promised concentration gains ever materialise — will be the test of a policy that, so far, appears to have delivered discipline without dividends.