Stronger Cell Phone Bill Needed for NC Schools!

by | Mar 17, 2025 | Mary Anne Tierney

We at SafeTech NC are grateful that the NC General Assembly is working on a bill to restrict cell phone use in NC public schools.  We ask the NCGA leaders to strengthen Senate Bill 55 with the following specifics:

  1. Please define “instructional time” to include all school hours – from the first bell to the last bell.  There are no studies showing significant improvements in mental health when students have the “trigger” of their phones to run to at each break and lunch.  Children need freedom from these addictive devices ALL DAY at school, like strong “guard rails” to reduce their isolation and protect their mental health from inappropriate content and cyberbullying.  This limited policy also causes all the burden of enforcement to fall on already over-taxed teachers. Bell-to-bell policies are well documented to improve mental health, reduce the demand for counseling (eventually saving money), increase academic outcomes, and improve school safety in a variety of ways.  See references below.
  2. Each school district should adopt and implement a policy that requires all personal electronic communication devices be turned off, securely locked away, and inaccessible to students during instructional time, requiring them to be locked or stowed away in secure lockable pouches, phone lockers, pencil pouches, manila envelopes, or other inaccessible locations.
  3. Air Pods and smart watches need to be included in the list of personal electronic devices.  Music, etc from Air Pods are highly distracting, increase risks of hearing loss, fungal infections, and have massive wireless radiation emissions directly into children’s developing brains. Smart watches have nearly all the same risks as cell phones.
  1. In the event of a safety emergency, all students can access their phones when the crisis has cleared, as directed by school administrators or the safety officer.   All students are safer
  2. Please prohibit the use of all social media and gaming in the school environment.

Safety experts nationwide have learned that all children are safer at school in the event of a shooting incident if they DON’T have cell phone access, but instead are focused on the adults before them, providing safety instructions. The binging and lights from cell phones can give away their location.  All parents can be contacted AFTER the safety threat is resolved.

 Local Control can still be provided: Individual districts and schools can decide for themselves about enforcement / consequences, storage of phones, and how to inform students and parents of these changes.

 Studies on Academic and Mental Health Improvements with phone-free policies:

Here are highlights of the outcomes from one of the gold-standard study conducted by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health:

  • The positive effects are evident at schools with the strictest bans, from bell-to-bell, requiring students to hand in or lock away their phones, not just place them on silent mode or away during classes.  Even on silent mode, the mere presence of cell phones can still pull at a student’s attention, distracting them as they wonder if someone messaged them, liked their status, or whatever else.
  • Banning smartphones from bell-to-bell lowers the incidence of bullying for both girls and boys.
  • Banning smartphones from bell-to-bell results in girls making gains in both their GPA and externally graded mathematics exams, on the order of 0.22 standard deviations. For comparison, the author notes that reducing class size by one student correlates to an improvement of about 0.00–0.05 standard deviations.
  • These benefits are particularly strong for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
  • Banning smartphones from bell to bell reduces the number of consultations for psychological symptoms by about 2–3 visits per child, per year, hence lowering costs of mental health services.

Smartphone Bans, Student Outcomes and Mental Health, Norwegian Institute for Public Health, 2024.

Let’s encourage our elected officials to enact the best policy that will save money, save our teachers from this disciplinary nightmare, and save our children from suicide risks and needless suffering. Specific language can be found in the Model Policy I have attached here. Support for implementation can be found at PhoneFreeSchoolsMovement.org

To contact the sponsors of this bill, follow this link:  https://www.ncleg.gov/BillLookUp/2025/S55

Gratefully, Mary Anne