I would like to start by saying I am a parent and I am well aware of how much a distraction and, occasionally, disruption screens can be. I’m fully cognizant of how a teenager can be entranced for hours with a phone in one hand and a laptop in front of them and how difficult it can be to pry them away from such devices to deal with other responsibilities or even take a breather. Fortunately, as far as I am aware, there have been no issues with my kids using phones or other electronic devices during school hours. Their school does however have a strongly worded policy on their use, presumably because other students have distracted or disrupted.

The reason I preface these remarks with that disclaimer is because, despite the title of this piece, I am all in favor of minimizing cell phone use during class time. I am not, however, in favor of using the power of the law to bring this about. It is unfortunate that the North Carolina General Assembly saw a need to even pursue this legislation and I am disappointed that Governor Stein chose to sign it because it opens the door for law enforcement action in what is ultimately a school policy issue. Although the text of SL 2025-38 does not seem to explicitly criminalize the presence of cell phones in schools, it does put extraordinary pressure upon school administrators to devise explicit policies for keeping such devices out of classrooms. Many schools, I imagine, already have such policies in place, but with this new law in place, those schools may feel empowered to use the power of the state to enforce those policies.

Across the country, thousands (an exact number is impossible to ascertain as police departments are notoriously opaque and resistant to offering the public accurate statistics) of cops and sheriff’s deputies are assigned to monitor American schools under the euphemistic title of school resource officers (SROs). I know at least one sheriff’s deputy is stationed at my children’s K-8 campus and while I am not sure if they are armed (although, if unarmed, the deputy would be one of a very few according to the Department of Justice), there is no question they are there as the fully kitted department car is parked out front. The limits of SRO authority and their “mission parameters” are often ill-defined even though they are ostensibly meant to prevent or, at least, respond to some major safety or security threat (e.g. a school shooting). Since major security threats are statistically rare, SROs are far more likely to be involved in discipline and policy enforcement which has proven, in many cases, to be like throwing a grenade into a cooking oil fire. In his exhaustively researched treatise The End of Policing, Alex Vitale highlights many examples of SROs responding to student outbursts or disruptions as if they were being called to a hostage situation.

Due again to law enforcement’s ability to report what and when they wish, there are no easily discoverable studies that reveal how much criminal activity is stopped by SROs. We are, however, able to glean some useful information about how SROs contribute to the creation of criminals. In a 2023 report from the Office of Justice Programs (a unit of the Department of Justice), roughly half of SROs surveyed reported conducting searches (presumably of students’ personal belongings or students themselves) and a similar number reported “interviewing” students without parents or guardians present. An even more troubling display of police impunity is that the majority of SROs reported their arrests were made unilaterally, that is to say without any review or input from the school’s administration. This report does not give us details about the nature of those arrests or their ultimate outcomes, but the fact that so many SROs reported making arrests at all suggests a not insignificant number of students found themselves involved with the criminal justice system.

Make no mistake: for all the talk of mentoring and outreach, SROs are, first and foremost, cops. At the time of this writing, the North Carolina Association of School Resource Officers (NCASRO) is meeting at Harrah’s Cherokee in Cherokee, North Carolina for their annual conference. The agenda includes speakers with programs such as “Role of SROs in School Behavioral Threat Assessments” and “New Juvenile Drug Trends and How to Investigate” — not exactly topics that will give school cops greater humanity or make their trigger fingers less itchy. One of the speaker’s talk is simply entitled “Surviving an Active Shooter” and while I’m sure the retired Oak Creek, Wisconsin officer’s story of a 2012 Sikh Temple shooting is harrowing, I’m not convinced of its value for SROs except as a way to perpetuate the lie that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The sense I get is that SROs almost want to be that mythical “good guy with a gun”, that they want someone to storm their school so they can finally say “See?! All the searches and unsupervised interrogations were worth it!”

But what does all this have to do with SL 2025-38 and the prohibition of cell phones in school? In a more perfect world it would mean nothing, but in this world it means we are almost certainly going to see students getting harassed, threatened and, possibly, forcibly detained by SROs because they were caught scrolling TikTok during class. While the law itself does not criminalize phones in class (a seemingly common reading of the law), the fact that the state of North Carolina has codified in law a requirement that schools file device control policies gives the impression that a legal ban is in place and SROs can be used as its enforcers. It is difficult enough for a parent to pry a relatively well-adjusted teenager away from their devices at home; there is almost always some exaggerated moaning and delay tactics. How difficult will it be for a teacher to convince a perhaps less stable middle-schooler to turn over their phone and how easy would it be for that teacher, upon encountering resistance and “disruptive behavior” to call in the SROs to confiscate the phone? SL 2025-38 includes language that calls for schools to develop and teach “instruction on social media and its effects on health, including social, emotional, and physical effects”. The very first minimum requirement enumerated is teaching the “[n]egative effects of social media on mental health, including addiction [emphasis added]”. If we have learned anything from the failed “War on Drugs” is that creating criminals out of the addicted does little but balloon prison populations and shift more and more people to the desperate fringes of society. Are we really expecting any better outcome when we start using SROs to enforce phone bans? Inevitably, and SRO will be called upon to remove a student for dangerous behavior as a result of their phone being taken and, inevitably, all the de-escalation training will either fail or be ignored and, inevitably, the SROs will respond with aggression and force — and there will be no video evidence to hold anyone accountable because everyone else played by the rules.