Those who might check their phone’s map when lost are instead being encouraged to ask for directions.

Option 1 - check smartphone, get instant GPS directions

Option 2 - ask random people if they can tell you how to get somewhere and hope you can remember after. And that they aren’t wrong. Got lost anyway? Ask someone else!

Option 3 - Buy a paper map. Vastly less convenient than a smartphone and still doesn’t encourage any human interaction.

If smartphones are banned, what about smartwatches, or tablets, or laptops?

From the linked article:

A total of 277 people turned out to vote – about 20% of the electoral register – with 54% in favour of the charter. The mayor, Vincent Paul-Petit, of the rightwing party Les Républicains, will now write a municipal decree on smartphone use, the first of its kind in France. It is not enforceable by police – officers could not stop or fine people scrolling in the street because there is no national law against smartphones – but the mayor describes it as an incitement to stop scrolling and guidance for limiting phone use. Shopkeepers are being urged to put up stickers in windows and gently ask people to stop scrolling.

So, in a town with 1385 people eligible to vote, 150 people voted in favour of the mayor’s proposal for a non enforceable ‘municipal decree’. Let’s see how that works out for them.

Ah, the good old days before smartphones when everyone was a social little butterfly…

Based France. Too many noses in the screen these days.