06/09/2026
The many problems with cell phones at school:
Most parents , grandparents , caretakers don’t realize what a problem cell phones cause at school. At this point, I am going to say I believe the best improvement you can make to a school is to ban the use of cell phones completely during school hours. They can keep the cell phone on their person but can't use them or have them out unless it's an emergency. Whatever research or collaboration cell phones might be used for is not worth the problems they bring.
What kind of problems?
Policing cell phones is becoming one of the biggest headaches there is at most schools and I don’t think that is going to change. It is common for 3rd graders to have their own cell phones and bring them to school which causes school disruptions.
Let us take this giant problem by some of the more common issues we see every day at the school level.
Class Disruption
Every teacher has to deal with the person texting or using social media during class time. Theoretically, this should be an easy fix for almost any teacher to solve by just confiscating the cell phone until the end of class. In reality, the problem is not so simple. These days parents are teaching their children that a teacher is not allowed to touch their cell phones. Therefore when a teacher asks for the cell phone the kids just say, “No” you can not have my cell phone. Once a student says they will not comply with the teacher's instruction it sets up a showdown between the student and the teacher in which most cases the teacher is going to come out the loser.
Teachers are quickly learning not to ask for cell phones as many kids will not hand them over. So now teachers have to teach with kids looking down under their desks at their devices. Many kids know to tell the teacher they are texting or speaking with their parents which sometimes they are and sometimes they just use it as the end-all excuse.
Bathroom breaks increase dramatically when cell phones are at school. Go to any major school and you will see kids take multiple bathroom breaks during class so they can go and check/update their social media. If a teacher tells a student they have already had two breaks then the parent will come into the school like a raging bull and demand their child be taken out of said class because the teacher is not sensitive to their child’s special needs and requirements.
This issue can not be solved by collecting cell phones at the beginning of class because many kids have two or three connected devices at school.
Bullying
Every school administrator gets parent phone calls stating that their child is being bullied on social media by another student. Even when the said event happens on the weekend from home, the parents expect the school to handle the situation because both students attend the school. Parents often use the line “It’s the school’s responsibility to ensure my child feels safe at school”.
Is social media bullying the responsibility of the school? This even gets crazier when the children involved are not old enough to have social media (13). We get parents that tell the school they have to fix it regardless if their child is old enough or not. Parents expect the school to start an investigation and give out consequences for online bullying.
These bullying investigations can easily involve 20 students at a time and can take up days of an administrator's time. Every parent will be upset with the school for either not doing enough or doing too much by investigating bullying which isn’t their responsibility.
N**e Photos
This item is more prevalent than most people can imagine. I know most parents don’t believe me when I tell them 70% of girls have sent out their n**e photos by 11th grade. They also don’t believe me that 40% of middle school girls have already sent out n**e photos. In dealing with this daily I can assure you the numbers are this high in most schools.
Again parents come into the school and expect the school to discipline whatever kid is sharing pictures of their kids. What parents don’t realize is that their child shared the picture to begin with which is why we have this problem. Police usually get involved when minors are sharing pictures of other minors.
As a security / professional with experience that I share to help make a positive impact.
Results are that the school personnel / police have your child in their office and have expressed permission admission that they have pictures of a specific underage child on their cell phone. They have yet seen the picture as thue have not looked at the phone. The seize of the cell phone as evidence because it has child sexual abuse material on it. They usually get the child or the parent to give authorities / law enforcement consent to look through the phone to verify what the student has already made a statement of.
If they don’t get consent , they can go through the steps to get a search warrant and then search the phone.
Rarely does the discovery of a teenager's cell phone with only one victim picture on it. A matter of records support that they usually see 4 - 25 kids' n**e photos on cell phones because kids trade the pictures around like baseball cards. Parents usually want me to give them back the cell phone and I have to say a big nope because it has child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Law enforcement usually never gives back the cell phones that contain child sexual abuse material. We don't give the phones back because we can never verify the images are completely wiped off the phone even after doing a master reset of the phone. Parents always try every way they can to get the phone back but I can assure you most courts treat child sexual abuse material very seriously. Sending or receiving n**e photos can result in misdemeanor or felony charges for underage students.
Stolen Phones
Kids will be kids and often leave/drop their phones at an unknown location. Parents come in and expect the school to conduct a full-blown investigation into the lost/stolen/missing cell phone. This takes away from the time administrators could be running the school.
Suicidal Kids
Lots of kids post suicidal notes on social media to either gain attention or they are feeling suicidal. At the school, we have to take each one of these seriously and do an investigation. This means we have to call multiple kids who saw the post and verify it and let their parents know we called them into the office as a witness. We also have to take the suicidal child to the nurse then the counselor watches them until their parents show up. Most parents have no idea how often this happens or how many resources each case takes to handle at the school. We don't mind doing this at all but it has to be added to the math of administration staffing requirements.
Threats to the school
Each school receives its share of threats over social media. Again the school has to launch a full-blown investigation during school hours as to the validity of the school threat. At each step of the process, you have parents who are enabling or not understanding what we have to do. Every parent I have ever called about their kid threatening the school has told me their child would never do that. I have done many investigations into school threats and some kids would do that.
School bus
Who patrols phone content on the school buses? The amount of craziness on a school bus is unimaginable as is the content shared and shown to kids who might not have their phones.
Lots of questions
So how many of these items should the school be responsible for? How many extra administrators/babysitters should the school hire to deal with cell phones at the school? I don’t know the answer to that but I do know that cell phones are a burden on most schools big and small.
Most schools have many landline phones that students are welcome to use in case of emergency or just to call home for almost any reason. Most parents I speak to have some kind of a special reason why their child and not everyone else needs to have a cell phone at school. A medical reason is the only true reason to be using a cell phone at school and that can easily be accommodated in a 504 plan.
Review please and take the action necessary to protect your child / teen.
Hollidaysburg, PA & Patton, Pennsylvania MBG is a highly-respected protection specialist. Training is a mix of Self Defense, Karate, and Mixed Martial Arts.
