Going against HN's usual anti-smartphone thing, I think this is incredibly dumb. Luckily no one really cares much about what UNESCO calls for.
Outright bans on smartphones in schools are no different from the video game, TV screen time, "kids will only play games on computers" and other related superstitions that were in vogue back in the early 2000s. All they did was make parents feel validated (without having to put in the work to understand their child) and make life difficult for most kids while building resentment.
As with most things, the decision of smartphone access for kids should come down to having parents actually understand their child, his/her needs and ability to handle the associated responsibility.
Especially as a teenager, pursuing my interests in computers was nothing but constant arguing with my parents because they were constantly being supported by outsiders (who had never seen what I was doing) on their anti-computer superstitions of the time (due to which they wholesale refused to understand that I wasn't gaming the vast majority of the time).
Outright bans on smartphones in schools are no different from the video game, TV screen time, "kids will only play games on computers" and other related superstitions that were in vogue back in the early 2000s. All they did was make parents feel validated (without having to put in the work to understand their child) and make life difficult for most kids while building resentment.
As with most things, the decision of smartphone access for kids should come down to having parents actually understand their child, his/her needs and ability to handle the associated responsibility.
Especially as a teenager, pursuing my interests in computers was nothing but constant arguing with my parents because they were constantly being supported by outsiders (who had never seen what I was doing) on their anti-computer superstitions of the time (due to which they wholesale refused to understand that I wasn't gaming the vast majority of the time).