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Educators, elected officials, and other stakeholders gathered in Raleigh last week to discuss diverse viewpoints regarding the use of cellphones in schools.
The convening, hosted by the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation on Sept. 12, focused on making policies to regulate phone use rather than a total ban.
“When we ban things, we create groups,” said state Superintendent Catherine Truitt. “We create groups who are in favor and those who oppose, and then we often attach some sort of morality to that… This is why bans are so problematic. This needs to not be about banning cellphones. It needs to be about creating policies that are right for students and their families and teachers, so that our students can thrive.”
According to the Pew Research Center, about one-third of K-12 teachers in public schools consider distractions from cellphones a major problem in the classroom, with another 20% calling it a minor problem. Nearly three-fourths of high school teachers (72%) say cellphone use is a major problem, according to the data.
Though phones are often seen as distracting, many parents and guardians want their students to be able to have phones in schools, primarily to reach them in an emergency situation.
Lauren Gendill, policy analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures, said at least 22 states have proposed legislation related to cellphone use in schools, and eight states have enacted such legislation since 2023. North Carolina is not one of them — though a bipartisan bill was filed in May that would require a study be done on cellphone policies in school districts.
Last week’s conference featured a variety of perspectives, including psychologists, students, educators, policy analysts, and others. Speakers and panelists talked about how cellphones can provide learning opportunities and other social and educational benefits for students, but can also distract students and bring challenges to mental health and development.
Enloe Magnet High School student Lucy Ashburn spoke at the conference to offer a student perspective on the issue. Ashburn said her teachers often ask students to use their phones during class for tasks like completing Google Forms or playing Kahoot!, a game-based quiz platform.
Ashburn said that having access to cellphones in school is often beneficial to students, as it provides them the ability to contact parents if needed, but phones can also cause distractions for both the student using the device and others around them.
“I feel like that’s good to be able to have something in your pocket,” Ashburn said. “You can text your mom, you can text your dad if you need something at school, and that’s helpful technology. But also, the constant feeling like, ‘Oh, did someone text me? Is my friend texting me?’ That’s always there, because you always have it in your pocket and in class. That can be hard to experience trying to stay engaged.”
Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer of the American Psychological Association and John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC-Chapel Hill, said young students lack the ability to effectively task shift, and access to phones can create additional obstacles to a student’s focus.
“If they have access to a device, including their own personal device, and they’re able to do that during school, it is probably going to be related to distraction, which is probably going to affect their school performance,” Prinstein said.
Opportunity for education
Some speakers said that cellphone use presents a learning opportunity in schools.
Educators can teach students through conversations about effective technology use that they may not receive at home, said Anne Ottenbreit-Leftwich, the Barbara B. Jacobs Chair in Education and Technology at Indiana University-Bloomington.
“If we’re producing students that aren’t able to use those technologies to express themselves, they’re not going to be as competitive as maybe other states that do have that capability,” Ottenbreit-Leftwich said.
Cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito said cellphone bans can also lead to inequity, as bans are often unequally carried out, with bans being applied more rigorously in lower-income public schools.
This means that wealthier students, who may already have greater access to technology, are more likely to have a better understanding of how to effectively engage with their devices than their lower-income peers, Ito said.
“There’s a tendency for the rich to get richer in terms of the deployment of technology,” Ito said.
Ito said though different kinds of technology have emerged and evolved over the past decades, a consistent trend is adults reacting with fear or restrictive impulses when youth engage in technology they didn’t have access to growing up.
“This is a consistent pattern that the stigmatization and demonization of technology in the hands of young people have created a new set of intergenerational tensions,” Ito said.
Banning technology use in schools is not a new concept, as there have been historic pushes to ban devices like calculators and laptops, said Mike Karlin, an assistant professor of STEM at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
Banning technology like phones prevents students from learning what healthy usage looks like, Karlin said, and more focus should be placed on empowering students to use technology for learning, creativity, connectivity, and expression.
“Some might learn at home, but a lot of students won’t get that at home, and they will end up continuing to be passive consumers of these devices and continuing to engage in unsafe practices, because they’re not getting that understanding, that social development, that community building around how to use these things safely,” Karlin said.
Adolescence is a key time for brain development and technology and social media use can affect this development in both positive and maladaptive ways, said Eva Trezler, professor of psychology and neuroscience at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Prinstein suggested schools provide better education on media literacy and healthy usage of social media and technology to better prepare students to engage with it.
“We don’t give kids of age the keys to a car without teaching them the skills to protect themselves and others on the road,” Prinstein said. “We shouldn’t give kids keys to the World Wide Web without similarly teaching them those skills.”
Local responses to cellphone use
The conference also featured a panel of educators and administrators from different North Carolina school districts to discuss what they are doing at the local level to address cellphone use.
Granville County Schools Superintendent Stan Winborne said his district’s board of education approved a policy last summer requiring cellphones to be “off and away” completely for grades K-8, and prohibiting cellphone use in the classroom for high schoolers. The policy is strictly enforced, and Winborne said it has been a “huge success” for the district.
“We saw our discipline rates drop by more than 10%, our suspensions fell by more than 17%, our academic indicators have improved,” Winborne said. “I can’t draw (a) cause and effect relationship there, of course, but generally speaking, it’s been fantastic, and our teachers are really happy about it.”
In Chatham County Schools, school leaders are working to prevent problems associated with phone use in the classroom while also allowing students to maintain possession of their own devices, which are often expensive.
“What I promised our teachers is that I wanted to give them back their classrooms,” said Superintendent Tony Jackson.
This school year, Chatham County Schools launched a pilot program at some of its schools to mandate the use of Yondr Pouches, which are given to each student. The pouches secure mobile devices through a magnetic lock.
Students begin the school day by securing and locking their devices in their Yondr Pouch. This way, students are able to keep their phones without the temptation of using them during class time. Upon leaving school, students can unlock their pouches at a special unlocking base provided by the school.
Students in Chatham County Schools who use the Yondr pouches have access to other technology in the classroom with Chromebooks, and phones are available in each classroom if there is a need for communication or an emergency situation. Special magnets are also available for students to access their phones in an emergency.
The pilot program just recently started, Jackson said, but he shared a story of a teacher responding positively to the effect it has already had on her students’ ability to participate in class.
“She said, ‘For the first time since the pandemic, I realized I saw my students’ eyes,’” Jackson said.
