All school governing boards in Arnhem, along with childcare organization SKAR, various social organizations, and the municipality, are jointly urging parents to delay smartphone use for children as long as possible and to only allow access to social media after they are 16. It is the first time so many parties in a single Dutch city have banded together to press parents on the issue.

The groups described the message as “unsolicited but urgent advice” prompted by worries about children’s development and mental health, Omroep Gelderland reports.

“There is almost no grip to get on cyberbullying,” Klaas van Veen, the statement’s initiator and a board member at Flores Onderwijs, told Omroep Gelderland. “We see that children sometimes arrive heavily fatigued at school because they have sat on a phone or tablet deep into the night, and they get so much disinformation that there is no working against it.”

“You must see it as unsolicited, but urgent, advice,” he added. “We want to make parents clear that it really has to be different, because children cannot handle this; it is addictive and mind-numbing.”

National rules ban mobile phones in secondary school classrooms since early 2024 and in elementary and special education classrooms since the previous school year. Those restrictions apply only during class time.

Every Arnhem education board backs the statement. Childcare provider SKAR, social organizations, and the municipality also signed the statement. Alderman Nermina Kundić endorses it. “Parents and caregivers often stand under pressure here,” Kundić said. “It is therefore very valuable that Arnhem schools and the municipality jointly support them in setting boundaries.”

Danielle Batist, a founder of Smartphonevrij Opgroeien, or Smartphone-Free Upbringing, called the move groundbreaking. “Fantastic. Arnhem is absolutely leading the way,” Batist told Omroep Gelderland. “It is the first city in our country where so many parties simultaneously say, ‘Don’t wait for national policy, but something has to change now.'”

The main obstacle is peer pressure, she said. “The problem is that group pressure has increased. Parents give their child a smartphone out of fear that they otherwise do not belong because it has become the norm to have one,” Batist said. “The only solution to remove that group pressure is then to collectively turn the tide.”

Since February, Montessori elementary school De Binnenstad has hung a sign declaring it a “smartphone-free school” after requesting the label through its parent pact initiative.

“Our protocol is very simple: children may not use a smartphone, never,” Director Menno van Halem told Omroep Gelderland. “But parents and teachers also are not. Also, not if they are waiting for the children in the schoolyard or have a break. And that actually goes particularly well; parents react very well and the atmosphere is nice.”

Whether every school in Arnhem will eventually adopt such a strict protocol remains to be seen, van Veen said. “In principle, schools decide that themselves,” he said. “But we really encourage every school to do what this school does,” he said. “Because it is only really effective if teachers and parents at school also do not use a phone. You cannot say, ‘You may not, but we may.’”

This local push in Arnhem comes after the Dutch coalition government unveiled plans to seek an EU-wide social media ban for children under 15. Parties D66, VVD and CDA support the measure, though experts have questioned whether the European Union has the legal power to enforce it.