Tel Aviv’s pilot ban on smartphones in high schools meets opposition from students

As the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality gears up to ban smartphones in several high schools as part of a pilot program announced earlier this year, some students are planning organized opposition to the move, according to a Sunday report.

In May, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai announced that smartphones will be banned from all educational institutions in the city, though the program will only involve six high schools for the 2025-2026 school year.

“We won’t let technology control us -– we are removing smartphones from schools,” Huldai, who has been mayor since 1998, said in a statement.

Under the plan, students will be required to turn their phones in upon arrival at school in the morning, and will get them at the end of the school day in the afternoon.

According to a Channel 13 report, after the schools involved in the pilot program announced the plan, their students are planning an organized opposition to the program, calling it “unreasonable.”

The report said that the students are arguing that the plan will force them to forgo extracurricular activities and obligations that they need to coordinate during school hours.

The students also claim that, due to frequent missile sirens and other alerts that may occur as a result of the ongoing conflicts, they need to be able to contact their families in case of emergency, and that taking their phones away for the entire day would be dangerous and unnecessary, the report added.

According to the report, some students are planning on bringing multiple phones to school, or are planning on not handing over their phones when the school year begins on Monday morning. The report also said that some students are planning protests, and even considering staging a shutdown of the schools for the first day of the school year.

In the meantime, the report said, the city’s student council is formulating ways to “bridge the gap” with the municipality to reach an agreed-upon outline to avert widespread disobedience to the program.

In response to the report, Shahar Skverer, the chairman of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipal Parents’ Committee, said the committee “welcomes” the program and said it aims to “return attention to the education system and to manage technology instead of it managing us.”

The chairman said that the “process that has already begun in a number of schools in the city,” and that “this is only the beginning.”

The Tel Aviv Municipality did not respond to Channel 13’s request for comment on the report.