Elite UK Boarding School Forces Kids to Swap Smartphones for Nokia 'Bricks'

Teenagers heading to Eton College this fall will have to swap their smartphones for a stripped-down Nokia feature phone.

Starting in September, the all-boys UK boarding school—which includes Princes William and Harry, Tom Hiddleston, and Eddie Redmayne among its graduates—will give its youngest students Nokia phones that can only make calls and send texts, The Telegraph reports.

The reports don't specify which model Nokia phones Eton will hand out. (Some may not be aware that Nokia is still in the game; it recently launched three colorful, sleek 4G feature phones.) But when Year 9 students, who are 13, get to campus this fall, they'll have to put the SIM cards from their smartphones into Nokia "bricks" that don't connect to the internet and send their iPhones or Samsung Galaxy phones home with their parents.

They won't be completely cut off from the 21st century; students get a school-issued iPad.

It's unclear when the kids can ditch the Nokia phones. Eton College says "age-appropriate controls remain in place" for older students. But the school has banned smartphones in classrooms since 2018, The Telegraph notes, which didn't go over very well at the time. And students in the lowest three levels have to turn in electronics at night.

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In explaining the move, Mike Grenier, Eton’s deputy head overseeing pastoral care, says there are "challenges and potential areas for concern [with smartphone use], especially around socialization, misuse, and overuse and the impact on both mental and physical health.”

Other schools in the UK are considering or implementing similar rules, as are public districts in the US. One argument that US parents have for letting their kids have smartphones in schools doesn't really apply as much in the UK: needing to get in touch in the event of a school shooting.