North Carolina is poised to join a growing list of states to enact commonsense measures to reduce mental illness and improve education outcomes for their children and adolescents. 

The North Carolina legislature passed a bill on Wednesday requiring public school districts to ban the use of cellphones in almost all instances during instruction time. Passed with near-unanimous bipartisan support, the bill requires cellphones to be turned off, silenced, or in airplane mode from the morning bell to the end of the school day, with a few exceptions, including emergencies, special education, and health plans. It will also restrict social media use on school devices and mandate teaching social media literacy, particularly how it affects mental health. 

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Should Gov. Josh Stein (D-NC) sign the bill into law as he is expected to do, North Carolina would join 26 other states to enact statewide cellphone restrictions in public schools and would be the fifth since the beginning of May. The language of each state law varies in scope. Some states, such as Florida and Louisiana, restrict cellphone use from “bell-to-bell,” while others, such as Indiana, only restrict use during instructional times. Some states mandate districts to create their own policies, while others impose uniform restrictions. Nearly all states include exceptions for medical needs, IEPs/504 plans, and emergencies. 

This newly emerging, bipartisan state-level consensus reflects a growing agreement regarding the harms caused by cellphone addiction to America’s youth. An avalanche of research supports the movement. An influential 2017 study performed by a group of scientists at the University of Texas at Austin found that even the mere presence of cellphones in a learning environment negatively affected learning. Researchers asked students either to leave their phones outside the classroom, put them in their pockets, or place them on their desks. The students furthest from their cellphones performed best. A study by the London School of Economics confirmed these results, finding that students without access to phones during test taking performed 13% to 20% higher than students with phones. 

Results are even worse for students who look at their phones during instruction time. A 2024 meta-analysis by SUNY Albany found that cellphone use during class significantly hampers students’ ability to recall the content of lectures and readings. This finding correlates with a 2023 UNESCO study showing smartphone distractions cause up to 20-minute refocus delays. A slew of other studies have found that students without cellphones in class have higher comprehension and receive higher grades. A University of Toledo study discovered that for every additional hour of daily smartphone use, a student’s GPA decreased by 0.152 points. 

Perpetual phone use is arguably even worse for a student’s mental health. Nearly half of American teenagers now report being online “almost constantly,” which causes changes in the brain’s reward system and leads to increased anxiety and irritability. The presence of phones in the cafeteria and the playground prevents students from forming deep and lasting bonds. Research shows that being ripped away from social interactions by regularly peeking at a phone reduces the quality of social interactions, fostering loneliness and isolation. 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Sherry Turkle captures the problem of phones in social settings in her book Reclaiming Conversation, saying, “We are forever elsewhere.”

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Resistance to phone-free schools tends to come from parents concerned about not being able to get in touch with their children during the school day. But families got by just fine for centuries without being able to make immediate contact during the school day. Schools have well-established systems for emergencies that worked well in the decades before smartphones. Reverting to phone-free environments isn’t a step backward but a return to a system that worked. 

North Carolina and the other states that have taken measures to create phone-free schools are prioritizing the well-being of their children. We hope it isn’t long until every state in the union follows their example.