Georgia high schoolers could be saying goodbye to their cell phones during school hours starting next year if lawmakers pass a proposal to ban electronic devices in high schools. Getty Images
Georgia’s teenagers could soon be doing significantly less scrolling, swiping and tapping on weekdays.
The state Legislature is poised to consider expanding the state’s classroom cell phone ban for elementary and middle schools to high schools. Under the plan passed last year with bipartisan support, school districts had until Jan. 1 to come up with a policy for keeping phones out of student hands during classroom time for kindergarteners through eighth graders, and they have until July to start enforcing it.
The author of the ban, Peachtree Corners Republican state Rep. Scott Hilton, said he introduced the high school expansion as House Bill 1009 near the start of this year’s legislative session after he said educators gave high marks to what Hilton calls “distraction-free education.”
Districts across the state have implemented their own bans ahead of the state deadline.
“I’ve just been blown away at the positive reaction across the board from all different constituencies, teachers, administrators, parents and even in a lot of cases, students who have experienced a difference and said, ‘Oh, wow, I kind of like this,’” Hilton said.
If the new bill passes the House and Senate and receives Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature, high schools will be required to ban cell phones starting in July 2027.
As of August, 35 states have some form of classroom electronics restriction in place, according to technology news site Techspot. Some states, like Georgia, have banned the devices entirely from the beginning of the day to the end and others have taken more permissive approaches such as allowing phones during lunch or between classes.
Hilton said Georgia is the only state to have started with the lower grades before moving up to high schoolers.
“I think it allowed folks to kind of socialize it, get used to it, and it’s made the transition a lot easier,” he said. “What I love, too, is that a lot of schools have seen the writing on the wall that we were addressing this and have proactively done it themselves already, and so we’ve got some real-world data and anecdotes, not only from across the country, but even inside of Georgia.”
A recent survey from the Professional Association of Georgia Educators found that nearly 72% of teachers in the state say the elementary and middle school ban will improve student learning, and about 71% say high schools should also be cell phone-free zones.
When only high school teachers’ responses were counted, support for a high school ban grew to 83%, the survey found.
School safety
Given the current bill’s popularity with teachers and bipartisan support from last year, the expansion seems likely to find favor in the Legislature this year.
House Speaker Jon Burns, a Newington Republican, has indicated that he wants to see action on a high school cell phone ban, but speaking to reporters ahead of the start of the session, he added that he also expects lawmakers to consider parents’ and students’ concerns about safety.
Worries about students being unable to contact their families in case of a shooting or other emergency have been a central argument against the cell phone bans, especially in the wake of the deadly 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder.
Supporters of classroom cell phone bans have emphasized that school emergency plans include procedures for communicating with families and for returning students’ phones to them when it is safe to do so.
“What we’ve learned from some of the tragic situations we’ve had, like in Barrow County, is that some of that communication certainly is good for the parent to understand that the child is safe, but also interferes with the safety protocols in the school,” Burns said. “So we believe that’s a part of that whole discussion, but you’ll see us move this session, I do believe, to ban cell phones in high schools, because so many jurisdictions around the state have already done that as well, and I think we’re all aware of that.
“I believe that will be something we will certainly have a lively discussion about, but certainly want to respect parents and their feeling of security for their students,” Burns added.
Last week, Apalachee was one of three Barrow County Schools that received called-in threats. The Barrow County Sheriff’s Office placed the entire district on soft lockdown until determining the calls were hoaxes and the schools were safe.
“It raised up a lot of hysteria and a lot of those PTSD triggers and everything because they even brought the choppers out and there was police presence at all the schools, all the schools were locked down and the whole county was pretty shaken up,” said Layla Renee Contreras, an Apalachee High School graduate whose mother and sister were at the school during the 2024 shooting.
Contreras is lead organizer for Change for Chee, an organization pushing for safety improvements in the wake of the shooting.
“I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when the high schoolers don’t have their cell phones on them,” she said. “Because other places in Georgia, they don’t understand our perspective. We’ve lived through this nightmare already.”
‘The sweet spot’
Speaking to reporters at a media symposium earlier this month, State School Superintendent Richard Woods, who is a Republican, said he supports removing cell phones from high school classrooms because he said they lead to distraction and can harm students’ mental health, but he said he is also cognizant of safety worries.
“I have a student that’s on my student advisory committee, and this young student was at Apalachee,” Woods said. “This student was shot at Apalachee. And I think, listen, there’s a concern that how we deal with this does have an impact. That young person said ‘my phone helped me.’”
“Do I support this? Absolutely,” Woods added, referring to the cell phone bans. “But I think we have to find a sweet spot and not move to the extremes.”
Woods said the specifics of plans should be left to districts. He said instructional time should be completely free of personal electronic devices, but he added that he may be open to districts allowing high schoolers to use their phones during other times like in between class periods.
“We have 181 school districts, over 200 when you think about charter schools, close to 2,400 schools in the state of Georgia,” he said. “So blanket-wise, yes, we need to preserve and put guidelines on how this should be used, but let the districts find out what’s working for them.”
Contreras said she thinks banning phones during classroom time is reasonable, but high school students should learn to be responsible for their own activity before they head off to college or enter the workforce.
“It should be on their person, on their body, in their book bag or something, accessible to them,” she said.
Schools commonly use devices like special locking bags to secure phones during the day or require students to put their devices in a container at the start of the day.
Hilton’s bill would require schools to restrict access entirely from the morning bell until the dismissal bell with the only exceptions being for activities that do not take place on school grounds like field trips, dual enrollment or apprenticeship programs.
“The best practice really is beginning of the day to the end of the day, and the reason being is if you allow for portions of the day, you get right back kind of where we are right now with teachers having to be cell phone police and discipline issues, and we really don’t want that,” Hilton said in a phone call.
Margaret Ciccarelli, an attorney and director of legislative services for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, said their educator surveys show teachers also favor the so-called “bell to bell” approach, likely because of the challenges intermittent phone use creates during transitions on campus.
“During non-instructional periods like lunch, students are distracted by phones and social media and less likely to engage positively with one another in a face-to-face setting,” she said.
Ciccarelli said surveys also show that educators are expecting parental push back on phone bans – 71% reported anticipating “strong parental or caregiver resistance.”
Hilton said he understands parents wanting to be able to get in touch with their children during the day, but eliminating the distraction of cell phones entirely is best for their education.
“I’ve got kids in school as well, and I catch my own self wanting to text them something,” he said. “I think the parents, in some respects, are part of the challenge, as we’ve got to understand and adapt ourselves to the fact that kids need to be learning and focused on that in school.”
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