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Experts Urge Limits on Cellphone Use in Mexican Schools

Specialists say tighter rules could protect children's attention, memory and classroom behavior during a consultative review by the education ministry.

Overview

  • On Wednesday specialists publicly urged regulation or bans on student cellphone use, saying excessive device use harms attention, memory and concentration in children and adolescents.
  • The Secretaría de Educación Pública has opened consultative forums organized by educational level to study possible rules for devices in classrooms, and those meetings have not produced formal policies.
  • Commentators and child-development experts proposed practical steps such as returning to handwritten homework and exams, strengthening teacher authority in class, and coordinating actions between schools, families and the government.
  • Some speakers linked short-form content and infinite scrolling to altered frontal-lobe development and very short content retention, but those neurological claims are reported with limited direct evidence.
  • Any future limits would change daily classroom routines, affect efforts to curb AI-enabled cheating, and require clear enforcement plans plus adults rethinking their own device habits to model healthier behavior for children.