Ban on cell phones in North Carolina classrooms?

Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning. Today, we will cover an education policy issue that has bipartisan support in North Carolina and national momentum— banning cell phones in classrooms. 

In April 2024, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote: “There’s a funny thing that happens in a nation’s thoughts. At some point everyone knows something is true, and talks about it with each other. The truth becomes a cliché before it becomes actionable. Then a person of high respect, a good-faith scholar who respects data, say, comes forward with evidence proving what everyone knows, and it is galvanizing. It hits like a thunderclap, and gives us all permission to know what we know and act on it.”

Noonan was talking about Jonathan Haidt, a well-known professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. His book “The Anxious Generation” sparked a nationwide policy movement toward banning cell phones in public school classrooms. Haidt’s book has sat on the New York Times bestseller list since its publication in March 2024.

At least 15 states now have policies in place that restrict or ban students from using cell phones during instructional time. California, for example, enacted a law in September 2024 requiring public school districts to write and enforce their own policies prohibiting cell phones during class.

And just last week, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, touted among his top 2024 accomplishments his executive order requiring schools to enforce cell phone bans during the school day.

Haidt and others point to reams of data that suggest phone usage among children and teenagers has greatly contributed to a mental health and academic performance catastrophe.

“Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States – fairly stable in the 2000s – rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019,” Haidt wrote in The Atlantic last year. “The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.”

A landmark 2022 study by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) linked phone usage at school with plummeting academic outcomes. The results even prompted The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson to change his mind about how problematic phones in classrooms really are.

“[PISA] is really the gold standard when it comes to looking at student achievement, especially in math and reading and science. And it has pretty conclusive evidence,” Thompson told NPR. “You see that students who spend more time staring at their phone, they do worse in school. They tend to distract other students around them. They also tend to feel worse about their life. All of this was found by PISA and has been found by other international surveys.”

The policy issue has been percolating in some circles for years. For example, in 2020, The Results Company hosted an event with statewide business leaders and brought in entrepreneur and Acton Academy founder Jeff Sandefer for a discussion on improving education in North Carolina. He suggested, among other things, that removing cell phones from the classroom should be on the agenda for every policymaker – the suggestion and subsequent discussion was a microcosm of Noonan’s “thunderclap” moment. 

Largely because Haidt’s new book threw gasoline on the simmering concern about phones, the movement to remove them from classrooms is now advancing at a ferocious pace. Florida became the first state to act in May 2023. Haidt predicts that by September of this year, “I think we’re going to have the great majority of schools in the United States phone-free.”

Another reason the policy concept has moved so rapidly is its bipartisan appeal. Challenge yourself to find another prominent policy debate with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former president Barack Obama all on the same side.

Here in North Carolina, policymakers contemplated a statewide ban on phones-in-class during last year’s legislative session, and the matter will likely return again this year.

Then-Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt spoke publicly last year against a blanket ban on cell phones in schools, a position that might seem at odds with the emerging policy consensus. Not captured in headlines, however, her stance actually reflects a nuance captured clearly in public polling. A full, outright ban on the presence of cell phones all day long in a school is opposed by a majority of adults (53% oppose and 36% support), according to Pew.

But a ban on the presence of cell phones during class is extremely popular, with 68% of adults in support compared to just 24% opposed.

Right now, North Carolina has a hodgepodge of policies that vary by school district and even school. State lawmakers may consider imposing a uniform, statewide policy restricting phone usage during class. Given the issue’s almost-universal bipartisan appeal, this seems like a matter on which legislators and Gov. Josh Stein can find common ground. Indeed, Stein publicly supported action on phones in school during his run for governor.

North Carolina Senator Jim Burgin expects the General Assembly to consider policies addressing cell phones in K-12 schools this legislative session. TRC Nexus will be closely monitoring this issue to see if the legislation will address the situation. 

In retrospect, the issue seems so obvious and so common sense. As Noonan noted, a prominent and respected messenger who packages a policy issue in just the right way, at just the right time, can “hit like a thunderclap.”

The time to engage on this issue may come sooner, rather than later, this year. Are you willing to engage?