Gatchalian Revives Classroom Smartphone Ban After Tacloban Shooting

Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian on Wednesday, July 1, 2026, returned to a measure he has filed before: a bill banning smartphones and other electronic gadgets in Philippine classrooms from Kindergarten through Senior High School, public and private. He relaunched the push in a week when two Philippine high schools sat under shooting threats, a violent game played by one suspect in a June 22 school shooting was temporarily blocked nationwide, and the Philippine National Police told a Senate hearing it had pulled at least 12 minors from online grooming pipelines it now labels nihilistic violent extremism. The Tacloban shooting and the foiled February plot in Laguna share a feature the bill does not address: the teenagers behind them were not on smartphones in class.

The renewed push for the Electronic Gadget-Free Schools Act, filed as Senate Bill 627, comes with three narrow exemptions for emergencies, health conditions, and teacher-directed learning. It does not reach the apps and gaming platforms that PNP says carried the radicalization. The teenage suspects in the Tacloban shooting and in the foiled February plot in Laguna were not on smartphones in class. They were on gaming platforms, in private chat rooms, on home Wi-Fi, after school hours. The bill targets phones during school hours; the phones PNP says carried the radicalization sit in bedrooms, on home Wi-Fi, after the bell. Senators and platform executives are now trying to bridge that gap from the other direction, with age-tiered Roblox access, a three-month probation period for the platform, and parallel hearings on a social media ban for minors.

Gatchalian Revives the Electronic Gadget-Free Schools Act

Gatchalian’s bill would bar K-12 students from using smartphones and other electronic gadgets during school hours. Narrow exceptions are carved out for situations where the device is part of the lesson, the student’s health, or an active threat. The measure covers public and private schools alike. The proposed law allows the use of mobile devices only in three cases.

• Classroom presentations and other teacher-directed learning activities
• Students with specific health conditions
• Emergencies or other situations involving a perceived threat or danger

“Maliban sa pagtiyak sa kaligtasan ng ating mga mag-aaral, isinusulong din natin ang smartphone ban sa mga paaralan upang matiyak nating nakatutok sila sa pag-aaral at hindi sila naaabala,” Gatchalian said, framing the measure in Tagalog. In English, the senator is pushing the smartphone ban in schools to make sure pupils are focused on their class work and do not get distracted, while also protecting their safety.

The same morning, the Senate Committee on Women, Children and Family Relations opened hearings on the online safety of minors, with the Tacloban shooting as its peg. Gatchalian also backs a separate push for a social media ban for minors that other senators have raised in recent weeks. The bill is filed as Senate Bill 627, branded the Electronic Gadget-Free Schools Act. The Gatchalian bill filed in the Senate on July 1, the same day the committee opened parallel tracks on a social media ban for minors, parental safeguards, and platform accountability. It is the latest in a wave of legislative responses since the June 22 shooting.

Three Killed in Tacloban, and a Game Called Gorebox

The shooting that triggered the renewed push happened on the morning of June 22 at San Jose National High School in Tacloban. Three students were killed and twenty were injured, fifteen by gunfire, when two teenagers aged 14 and 15 allegedly opened fire inside a classroom with a 9mm Glock 17 and a .38 revolver. The CICC order temporarily blocking the Gorebox app followed within days.

The incident has been widely described as one of the first school shootings in the Philippines in decades. Police arrested both suspects. The 15-year-old, identified in filings by the alias “Rod,” was charged with three counts of murder, three counts of frustrated murder, and multiple counts of serious physical injuries. The 14-year-old, “Nash,” is below the age of criminal responsibility and was turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development for intervention.

The action targeted Gorebox, a first-person shooter where players can “obliterate anything [they] desire” and “engage in brutal combat with an extensive arsenal of weapons and explosives,” according to the game’s Google Play listing. The International Age Rating Coalition gave Gorebox an R18 rating for “extremely violent, explicit, and unrestrictive gameplay.” Police spokesman Allan Rae Co said the 14-year-old suspect appeared to have been “heavily influenced” by online content. He had been posting violent material before the attack. Police say the 9mm Glock used in the Tacloban shooting belonged to the aunt of one suspect, a police officer later suspended from duty. The .38 revolver was registered to a security agency in Cebu City but had been in the possession of one shooter’s grandfather, a former security guard.

We cannot ignore possible online influences that may have contributed to this tragic incident. Temporarily blocking the game will allow authorities to conduct a thorough assessment into whether the platform played any role in the actions of the suspects.

That was Aboy Paraiso, an undersecretary at the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center. Education Secretary Sonny Angara added a warning about copycats, telling reporters the government is “very concerned” and does not “want a situation seen in the United States, where there have been concerns about copycat incidents.” The two suspects had researched the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act and timed the attack for a Monday morning, planning it as early as May 1.

February in Laguna: The Roblox Pipeline PNP Says It Stopped

Gatchalian also pointed to a foiled attack the police disrupted in February in Calamba, Laguna, south of Manila. Philippine National Police officers acting on a tip rounded up seven teenagers on February 2, five boys and two girls aged 12 to 17, before they could carry out a plot timed for February 16. Other countries have tightened rules for children of similar ages, on different rationales. The plan, recovered from the group’s phones and chat logs, called for Molotov cocktails, improvised explosive devices, and fire extinguishers used as “flash blinding” tools. The teenagers had discussed staging a “final YouTube message” and writing a manifesto, then dying by suicide after the attack.

Phones seized from the group contained photos of tactical vests, gloves and an assault rifle, along with images referencing Hitler and “No Lives Matter” shirts linked to past mass shootings. They had been in contact with handlers on Roblox, then migrated to private chat rooms and crossed into Telegram and Discord, where the radicalization accelerated. Most of the groomers behind the extremist influence are based abroad, with only one identified locally, PNP-ACG has said.

PNP chief Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. asked parents to monitor their children’s online gaming. “We have to work together to ensure that our children will not be encouraged to violate the law by committing violence and other illegal activities that some people or groups may ask them to do,” he said. The Philippine Department of Information and Communications Technology and the CICC said that “Roblox is now formally on notice,” demanding full cooperation to avoid a potential suspension in the Philippines. Authorities gave the platform a three-month probation period to roll out safety improvements.

What PNP Calls Nihilistic Violent Extremism

The Philippine National Police’s Anti-Cybercrime Group has tied at least five rescue operations to the same recruitment pipeline. PNP’s April 14 hearing on nihilistic violent extremism mapped the pattern in detail. Deputy director Colonel Romeo Desiderio told senators that the grooming ideology, which the PNP calls nihilistic violent extremism, advocates violence because “life, society, or human existence has no value or meaning.” The victims are aged 12 to 17, most in private schools, drawn from middle- to high-income families. Grooming starts on Roblox and shifts to encrypted chats, Desiderio said. The cases span areas including Marikina, Las Piñas, Negros Occidental, Batangas, and Pampanga.

Two of those cases involved firearms on school grounds. In Marikina in October 2025, a student took his father’s licensed pistol, pointed it at a classmate and at himself, and “while joking” fired the gun; on February 5, a Grade 12 student in Batangas brought a .45 caliber firearm to school, fired twice at the classroom floor, and shot himself; both students later died in hospital.

• At least 5 rescue operations across five regions
• 12 minors rescued from the grooming pipeline
• Suspect ages ranging from 12 to 17
• Platforms involved: Roblox for first contact, then Telegram and Discord for the deeper grooming

“Minors have impressionable minds. Far-right indoctrination and radicalization is a real threat through social networks, online forums and multiplayer games,” Carlos Nazareno, a game developer and digital rights advocate at Democracy.Net.PH, told reporters covering the case. He warned that Islamic State and al-Qaeda have used the same channels for recruitment. Mental health professionals at the April hearing underscored the urgency of early intervention, warning that “prevention is better than cure” because children are biologically and cognitively immature. The Philippine Psychiatric Association separately pointed to a worsening mental health crisis among young people, with suicide rates climbing and the victims getting younger.

PNP-ACG said it continues to monitor online spaces, including gaming platforms, through dedicated cyber patrol operations. “We have cyber patrollers that are patrolling on Roblox,” Desiderio told the hearing. Recovered materials from past cases include a “No Lives Matter” shirt and items linked to extremist ideology. Some minors showed interest in Nazism, satanism, and occult groups such as the Order of the Nine Angels, as well as admiration for perpetrators of mass shootings abroad. Seven other similar cases also remain under active investigation, Desiderio added.

Roblox Promises Safeguards, Senators Push Hearings

Roblox has responded with platform-level changes that the company’s vice president for public policy, Nicky Jackson Colaco, walked senators through at the April hearing. By early June, the company rolled out an age-tiered access system under which “Roblox Kids” accounts for users aged 5 to 8 have communication disabled by default and are limited to a curated catalog of games. Users 9 to 15 sit in “Roblox Select,” allowed to chat but with filters and limits on interactions to similar age groups.

Senators are not waiting on the rollout. Sen. Risa Hontiveros of the Committee on Women, Children and Family Relations has called online platforms “nests for brainwashing and radicalising our youth,” adding that “if the internet is being used to victimise children, we will not wait for the next victim before we act.” Other senators have filed separate proposals, including real-name registration and identity verification for social media users. Authorities also pushed Roblox to establish a physical office in the Philippines to make coordination easier; Colaco told senators she was “not in a position” to confirm such a move.

The Phone the Bill Targets, and the Phones It Won’t Reach

Gatchalian’s bill draws a circle around the smartphone in the classroom. The cases PNP has tied to nihilistic violent extremism sit outside that circle, and the triggering incidents have one feature in common. The phones carrying the grooming were not in schools. The Tacloban shooting was planned as early as May 1, police said. The suspects researched the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act and timed the attack for a Monday morning, choosing a date when classes were in session. The Laguna seven were on home internet, in private chats on Roblox, then in encrypted rooms on Telegram and Discord, when they were pulled out.

The Batangas City Integrated High School, where classes were suspended on June 29, faced a threat posted to its Facebook page, not to a phone inside the building. Authorities in Tolosa, Leyte, tracked down a 14-year-old student for posting threats of violence online, days after the Tacloban shooting.

The pattern that police and senators have named does not begin or end at the school gate. A classroom phone ban removes a device during school hours. The phones PNP says carried the radicalization sit in bedrooms, on home Wi-Fi, after the bell. Sweden’s health agency has recommended no smartphones before age 13, with Finland and Denmark backing the same line, on health and exposure grounds. The Philippine Senate’s parallel committee track on minors’ online safety is where the pipeline question is now being asked.