Poland moves to ban phones in schools, tighten porn access for children

Poland moved to draw a harder line around children’s screen time, with Prime Minister Donald Tusk backing a ban on mobile phones in schools for under-16s and a separate plan to tighten age verification for pornography sites.

The school measure would cover children ages 7 to 15 in primary schools and would bar phone use on school property, including during breaks. Officials said the rule was being drafted as a nationwide legal change that would take effect on September 1, 2026, giving schools a legal basis to store phones during the day rather than leaving the decision to individual principals and school statutes.

Tusk cast the move as more than a school discipline issue. He said there was a “civilizational problem” of addiction among children and adults to platforms, games and constant connectivity. The language signaled that Poland is joining a growing international experiment in regulating children’s digital lives, rather than treating phones as a narrowly domestic culture-war issue.

The Polish plan would place Warsaw alongside countries such as the Netherlands, South Korea and Italy, which have already restricted smartphones in schools over concerns about concentration and behavior. The unresolved question, in Poland and elsewhere, is whether governments can limit those harms without creating new problems around enforcement, privacy and free expression.

That same tension runs through the pornography proposal. The government said the bill would impose stricter age-verification requirements on sites that host adult content, but it would not allow simple age declarations, biometric data or the use of online activity data to prove a user is old enough. The aim is to build a system that protects privacy and personal information while keeping children out.

Barbara Nowacka, the education minister, has also pushed the debate further, saying in February that social media access should be restricted for children under 15 and that platforms should be responsible for age checks. She added, “We believe that access to social media for children under 15 should be restricted.” Monika Rosa, a lawmaker from Civic Coalition, said 1.4 million children ages 7 to 12 use social media in Poland, despite most platforms setting 13 as the minimum age in their terms.

The pressure on technology companies could be substantial. A legal briefing from the International Bar Association said penalties for failures related to risk analysis or age verification could reach PLN 1 million, and that the rules would apply to electronic service providers operating in Poland regardless of where they are based. Polish school-law commentary also notes that schools already can limit phone use during lessons, but the new proposal would replace patchwork local rules with a national ban.