by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press
June 11, 2025

When Shaneeka Moore-Lawrence was in school, cafeterias and hallways were filled with conversation. Now, they’re quieter. Most students are on their cellphones. 

“Students, I say jokingly, but not jokingly, come out of the womb swiping,” said Moore-Lawrence, president of the North Carolina Parent Teacher Association. “…Technology definitely has its benefits, but there has to be a balance that happens, especially with such young, impressionable, vulnerable minds.” 

This year, North Carolina lawmakers are trying to find that balance. Dueling bills in the state House and Senate would create cellphone-free education policies in public schools. State Rep. Neal Jackson, R-Moore, said a compromise bill taking “the best of both” will come very soon. 

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In a world where teachers increasingly compete with TikTok for students’ attention, bans on using cellphones aren’t a new idea. But state legislatures across the country have caught the bug this year, with proposed bills in at least 10 states addressing the issue, according to the Education Commission of the States. 

In North Carolina, the idea has bipartisan support. But the details aren’t quite ironed out just yet. 

No cellphones, fewer problems?

At Union Pine High School in Moore County, students place their cellphones in a compartment by the dry erase board before class begins. 

After a school tour last summer, Jackson asked the principal about the policy. 

“He said, ‘It’s been the best thing ever,’” Jackson recalled. “He said, ‘It’s been wonderful for kids, so that they can focus, they’re not texting each other, they’re not distracted, they’re not surfing the web.’” 

Jackson decided to bring the idea to Raleigh. He had the legislature’s bill drafting department create an initial bill, and then disseminated it to school boards and superintendents in his district for feedback. 

While they suggested a few revisions, everyone was on the same page about the need to act. 

According to a Common Sense Media study, school-age kids get about 237 notifications a day from their various messaging and social media apps. During the school day, they spend a median of 43 minutes on their cellphones scrolling social media feeds, watching YouTube and gaming, among other activities. 

Annie Goldberg, a school counselor at Broadview Middle School in Burlington, said she noticed a shift in student behavior coming back from the COVID-19 pandemic. After getting used to picking up their phone at any time during virtual learning, students lost some of their “school endurance,” she said. They don’t have the same level of impulse control. 

Further, students are getting phones younger and younger. Many of her students come into middle school with a cellphone, Goldberg said. Nearly all US teens 13 and over have a smartphone, according to a 2022 Pew Research study. 

The concerns don’t stop at learning distraction. The US Surgeon General linked rising social media use to a “profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children.” In the past 15 years, there’s been a 40% increase in high schoolers reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, according to the surgeon general’s advisory. 

Finally, educational leaders worry that cellphones bring other issues into schools, like cyberbullying, cheating and a self-consciousness that other students are filming them or posting about them online during class, Goldberg said.

“The thought of maybe not having to worry about that would probably bring them some kind of respite,” she said. 

From idea to bill(s)

The House and Senate versions of the bill have “pretty significant differences,” Jackson said, but he’s confident there will be a compromise soon. 

The House version of the bill would require public school boards to create policies eliminating or severely restricting students’ access to their cellphones during instructional time. Students with documented medical conditions might get an exemption, and teachers could allow use for educational purposes. 

The Senate version goes a bit further by mandating a wireless communication policy, regulating not only cellphones, but tablets, laptops, gaming devices and other wireless devices students could use to communicate. Students would be banned from having their devices turned on or in view during instructional time. Unlike the House bill, it includes an explicit exception for use during emergencies. 

State Rep. Lindsey Prather, D-Buncombe, would like a mix of the two. She prefers the Senate’s use of a list of wireless devices so that school boards and students understand what the policy is meant to cover. But she also doesn’t want to leave any loopholes open for future technologies not explicitly mentioned in the law. 

Several senators expressed concerns with requiring phones to be turned off, considering the possibility of lockdowns and school shootings, when time would be of the essence. But an amendment from Sen. Lisa Grafstein, R-Wake, removing that requirement was tabled in March.

In response to Grafstein’s concern, State Sen. Jim Burgin, R-Johnston, said the best course of action in emergencies would be for students to follow their teachers’ instructions anyways. 

“If you have an active shooter in a school, we want to make sure that, if that teacher gets information about ‘You need to go down this hall and get out this door,’ … we don’t have parents say, ‘Climb out the window,’” he said.

Regardless of which parts of both bills end up in the final legislation, Jackson said it’s key to leave the details to individual school boards. 

“We think they’re smarter,” he said. “They’re on the front lines. Things are different in Manteo and Murphy and Raleigh, so we don’t buy into the one-size-fits-all strategy. We’d rather have the 115 school districts across the state be creative and come up with their own solution.” 

Local school boards can and have already established their own policies. Granville and Brunswick counties have implemented policies that improved student behavior and attention, State Sen. Jay Chauduri, D-Wake, said during floor debate. 

Wake County’s school board recently voted unanimously to require elementary and middle schoolers to have their phones silenced and out of sight during the school day, while high schoolers can take them out during breaks. 

The state’s interest is in ensuring that all schools have some level of restriction, whatever that ends up meaning, Jackson said. 

“The role of the state is to say, ‘Hey, we are giving you all this money. We want a good return on our investment,’” he said. “So, therefore, remove this distraction.”

What do parents and students think? 

Lawmakers can write whatever legislation they want, but their efforts will go nowhere without district buy-in, Prather said. That means getting parents and students on board. 

“A lot of times, parents feel like they paid for that phone, and so they should get to decide if their kid has access to that phone or not,” she said. 

That’s where Gov. Josh Stein’s Advisory Council for Student Safety and Well-Being comes in. In April, Stein issued an executive order creating a group of educational and governmental leaders to compile best practices on how to develop and implement wireless communication device policies in schools. 

Prather, Moore-Lawrence and Goldberg are on the council, which published its final report last week. 

The report outlines the benefits and challenges of various types of cellphone bans, from securing cellphones in locked pouches during the school day to putting them on silent and out of sight.

It also offers advice on how to support and communicate with parents, teachers and students during the transition to make the policy a success. 

If you asked students whether they like a cellphone ban, their first instinct would be to say no, Goldberg said. But if you dive deeper, they may be on board with taking away all the distractions, she said. 

She doesn’t expect the first year to be perfect. Kids are creative, and there may need to be some troubleshooting. But Goldberg’s goal is to see her students’ brains focused on “playing and figuring out who they want to be and interacting with each other,” not their screens. 

“A win would just be that our kids get to be kids,” she said. “Our kids’ mental health improves, our kids’ attendance approves, and that the parents and stakeholders feel that this was done not in spite of them, but to support them and to support their kids.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Cellphones in schools targeted by NC legislators appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

This article presents a balanced view on the issue of cellphone use in schools, highlighting perspectives from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, educators, and parents. It discusses the benefits and challenges of proposed legislation with an emphasis on pragmatic solutions rather than ideological positions. The tone is neutral and focuses on student welfare, education policy, and bipartisan cooperation, which aligns with a centrist viewpoint.