Society has woken up. It has woken up drunk. That’s how I’d describe everything that’s happening. Laws are popping up left and right right now, awaiting a vote to ban the use of cell phones in schools by students—children and teenagers—in educational settings. Once again, they’re making a mistake by choosing the path of prohibition rather than dialogue.

Cell phones are the scapegoat for a society that refuses to acknowledge its own flaws. Cell phones and their use are now being criminalized because children and young people aren’t learning. Cell phones and their use are now the hot topic of the moment for those who have never taken the time to actively listen to children and adolescents.

They’ve never listened to young people, and now they’re turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to ban them. Let me remind you that a cell phone is a camera, a television, a computer, a word processor, a voice and video recorder, among many other uses. Cell phones democratize access and give poor boys and girls the same chance to create and shape their own paths in life, almost on an equal footing with the wealthier classes.

Many poor children and young people can discover, through their cell phones, the power of their art and communication. Thanks to cell phones, indigenous people have gained a platform and legitimacy they did not have before. Authentic content creators are everywhere in Brazil thanks to cell phones. A girl from a rural area can have just as much of a voice as a Black girl from a quilombo community or a young woman from the middle class.

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• The instructional coordinator as a team builder

Cell phones offer possibilities that textbooks never did. But instead of recognizing this and finding ways to harness their potential, society now wants to ban them—throwing out the baby, the water, and the bathwater. That’s wrong.

After three uninterrupted decades of cell phone use by children and young people—including during school activities—society suddenly decided it was time to ban their use on school grounds. In other words, no one ever took this issue seriously (even though we, as educators, had constantly warned about it), and all of a sudden they decided to ban it with hastily drafted laws.

I want to emphasize here that every decision made now will serve as an example for this age group as they make decisions—for us and about us—in the future. Let me explain—if, instead of engaging in dialogue with children and young people, society jumps straight to prohibition, don’t come to me in my old age expecting to have a conversation with them about our lives. They won’t have any examples of dialogue to draw on. They’ll be just as punitive toward us older people as we are toward them now.

It is example that educates. This example of punitive prohibition will bring us neither progress nor peace-building actions. It will simply deprive children and young people of their right to participate in life—their own lives.

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