ALL elementary and middle school students in Xiangtan, a city in Central China’s Hunan Province, are forbidden from using smart phones and personal tablets at school, in a bid to prevent students from vision loss and being subject to harmful information.

The regulation, published by the education bureau in Xiangtan, has sparked huge controversy.

The provision bans primary and middle school students around the city from using cell phones and tablets at school. And the overall usage time of smart electronic products should be controlled strictly and limited to less than half an hour per day, pearvideo.com reported Friday.

“I disapprove of the prohibition,” Zhang Xinnian, a Beijing-based lawyer, told the Global Times on Sunday, noting that primary and middle school students also have the right to get information from smart phones.

However, as the students lack the experience to distinguish harmful content from useful, schools and teachers should guide them patiently rather than simply banning phones, he said.

Yan Feng, a professor of the Chinese Department of Fudan University also criticized that simply accepting a ban as the solution to students’ problems caused by overusing smart phones would deprive children of their independence and bring more problems in the future.

However, voices of approval from parents also exist. “We will respond to the call because it is a benefit to children’s development,” a parent, surnamed Guo, said to Pear Video.

There are some cases where young students are addicted to mobile games. A 13-year-old boy, surnamed Xu, jumped from the fourth floor of an apartment in Nantong, East China’s Jiangsu Province, after playing the mobile game Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds overnight, an act which his mother believes was his attempt to imitate gameplay that directly led to his death, Nantong TV reported in August.

(Global Times)