By Emily Walkenhorst for WRAL

North Carolina lawmakers want to require every public school in the state to prohibit the use of cellphones and other electronic devices during classes, with few exceptions.

A bill filed Wednesday by several Senate Republicans would also require school boards to establish consequences of their own choosing for students who don’t follow the rules.

The proposal, Senate Bill 55,  makes North Carolina the latest state where leaders are trying to crack down on cellphone use in schools and cellphones use among young people in general.

Long considered a scourge among teachers and school administrators, cellphones are stirring up concern among parents and policymakers who blame social media and helicopter parenting for increased anxiety among young people. Teachers say devices keep children from paying attention to their lessons and making more healthy connections with their peers.

The bill — sponsored by Sens. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover, Jim Burgin, R-Harnett, and Lisa Barnes, R-Nash. — would prohibit the use of cellphones, tablets, laptops, pagers, two-way radios and gaming devices during class, except when they are authorized by the teacher to be used for education purposes or in an emergency. The devices would also be allowed for students who need them to manage their health care, such as a diabetic student who uses an app to check their blood sugar, or if they are part of an education plan for a student with a disability.

Tablets and laptops are commonly used for quizzes, testing, class reading, lessons and assignment completion. Cellphones can be used sometimes for their calculators during math or science classes.

Bill sponsors are trying to make the requirements effective for the start of the next school year.

It’s unclear exactly how much would change if the bill passed.

Federal data from 2022 shows most schools already prohibit cellphone use during class time. Many of them already require cellphones be confiscated under certain circumstances, though survey data haven’t asked about what consequences are in place, if any, at those schools that have prohibitions.

Teachers and school administrators say enforcement of these policies has been challenging and exhausting for teachers. Some teachers have told WRAL News they don’t want to confiscate phones, because they don’t want to be responsible for any damage to a device while it’s in their possession.

Senate Bill 55 would require school boards — rather than schools themselves — to establish policies, including consequences. Some districts already have districtwide policies on cellphone uses. Wake County doesn’t, but the board is in the middle of developing one and surveying constituents about what they want to see. Currently in Wake, individual schools have created their own policies, and many — if not all — prohibit the use of cellphones during the school day. But their approaches to the bans vary school-to-school or, sometimes, classroom-to-classroom. Some have pouches for students to lock up their phones during class. Others have green light, yellow light and red light policies for when phone use is allowed, limited or not allowed at all.

In Granville County, for example, teachers and administrators have established consistent procedures for how to handle seeing a phone out in class. Teachers are supposed to immediately notify the principal’s office the first time they see a phone. The principal is then expected to drop what they’re doing, take the phone, and allow students to pick it up after school.

School leaders have acknowledged that stronger pushes to keep cellphones out of students’ hands during class time could require differing approaches to schools’ own communication, such as how clubs and teams reach students about updates to meeting and practice times.

The preceding article originally appeared on February 5, 2025 at WRAL’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Carolina Leadership Coalition.