What School Safety Experts Want Parents to Know About Phones in Emergencies

As we’ve been talking to people across Colorado about our advocacy for phone-free schools, we hear one concern consistently, “what if the unthinkable happens at my child’s school and I need to reach them?” We want to share some information we found while we were learning about phone-free schools. In this post we compiled information from school safety experts, first responders, and law enforcement professionals who specialize in school emergency preparedness.

As parents, we understand the fear. When we hear about another school emergency on the news, our first thought is: “I need to be able to reach my child.” It’s natural. And school safety experts understand precisely why we feel this way.

But they also need us to hear something critical: The phones that make us feel safer may create more danger for our children during emergencies.

Dr. Kenneth Trump is one of the nation’s most respected school safety experts. He’s advised schools after almost every major school crisis over the past two decades. He’s trained first responders, worked with law enforcement, and he’s studied what actually saves lives during school emergencies.

He says, “While the cellphone meets the emotional security needs of a parent, it can make their child actually less safe in the moment of an incident, because they’re paying attention to the phone, they’re responding. They’re sending messages, possibly even live streaming it. They’re not listening to the adults who should be trained to give them directions.”

A superintendent shared a story with researchers from the Screenagers documentary project. During an actual lockdown at his school, students immediately started texting their parents. Within minutes, he faced a new crisis, “Our first responders were arriving at the school, and we had parents lined up in our driveway, and the first responders literally couldn’t get their vehicles to our school. The driveway was backed up all the way to the street.”

School security experts, first responders, and law enforcement agencies like the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) consistently share these reasons that cell phones put our students at risk during an emergency:

1. Traffic prevents emergency response When students send frantic texts, parents rush to the school. Roads and access points get blocked, and emergency vehicles can’t get in.

2. Noise reveals hiding locations During silent lockdowns, survival depends on absolute quiet. Phones vibrate, ping, and put off light that can be seen under doors. Security experts warn that even one noise could reveal a hiding spot to someone with harmful intentions.

3. Important information gets missed In emergencies, students need to give 100% of their attention to trained adults giving life-saving instructions. When they’re texting, calling, or checking to see if friends are okay, they miss critical information.

4. Misinformation can be spread Students posting on social media during incidents can spread misinformation that causes panic or potentially give attackers information.

5. System overload impacts emergency response When hundreds of people call 911 simultaneously, they overwhelm emergency dispatch systems and first responders have a harder time coordinating their response.

If cell phones can put students at risk in emergency situations, what do security experts say actually helps? Students need to be fully present and attentive when it matters most. Students need to follow safety protocols and listen to instructions without digital distraction. Schools have communication systems, protocols, and trained staff who know how to reach families safely when it’s appropriate to do so.

None of this makes the fear go away. We live in a time when school safety concerns are ever-present, and that’s a terrible burden for all of us. But phone-free schools aren’t just better for learning, mental health, and social development, according to the people who train for, respond to, and study school emergencies, they create safer conditions when the unthinkable happens, too.