Should we ban all smartphones for school‑age children?

YES — absolutely we should ban smartphones for children… if our goal is to sabotage their future, cripple their skills, and create a national crisis.

NO. They should not ban smartphones for school‑age children. As the future becomes increasingly dependent on technology, coding, and AI, it is essential that young people receive an education shaped by the world they are growing into — not the world adults nostalgically wish still existed.

To understand the consequences, let’s look at a short story.

Milo grew up in a town where smartphones were banned for all school‑age children. While adults celebrated the “return to a pure childhood,” Milo slowly drifted further and further behind the world he was expected to join.

At ten, he watched children in other towns learn coding apps while he practised handwriting. At twelve, he realised he couldn’t navigate even basic digital tools. At fourteen, he saw classmates from neighbouring schools building simple AI projects while he struggled to open a settings menu. At sixteen, he attended a robotics workshop and froze because he didn’t understand the interface everyone else used instinctively. At seventeen, he applied for entry‑level jobs requiring digital communication, coding basics, and AI‑assisted tasks he had never been allowed to practise. At eighteen, he failed every online assessment and interview involving technology. At nineteen, he was labelled “unskilled” despite being bright and motivated. At twenty, automation wiped out the low‑skill jobs he relied on. At twenty‑one, he discovered even retraining programmes required digital fluency he didn’t have. At twenty‑two, he watched younger teens surpass him instantly because they grew up with the tools he was banned from touching. And by twenty‑three, he was unemployed — not because he lacked intelligence or effort, but because the adults who banned smartphones had unknowingly cut him off from the very future they expected him to survive in.

We would hate to see our youth grow up like this.

Yes, it is painful to watch the past fade. Yes, it is overwhelming to see things that once belonged to sci‑fi comics now walking our streets. But fear of the future does not justify ruining children’s lives. That is pure effrontery.

The facts are simple: the world is moving forward. The only responsible choice is to help children move with it — not to hold them back.

Banning smartphones is banning the future. And children are the ones who pay the price.