When shots rang out at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday morning, terrified students pulled out their cellphones. In panicked text messages they feared would be their last, they told their families that they had heard gunshots, that they were scared and that they loved them.

Screenshots of their texts circulated on social media after the shooting, which left two students and two teachers dead and nine others injured. The texts have reignited a long-running debate: Should schools allow cell phones, which can be a major distraction in class but are a lifeline in emergencies?

There is clear research showing the downsides of smartphones, especially for teens. The phones and their addictive social media platforms have been linked to poor sleep, cyberbullying, and unhealthy self-esteem in young people. A 2023 study by technology and media research group Common Sense Media found that teens are inundated with notifications from their smartphones—receiving an average of 237 notifications per day, about a quarter of which arrive during the school day.

At least 13 states have passed laws or policies that ban or restrict student cellphone use in schools statewide, or are recommending that local districts enact their own restrictions, according to Education Week. Individual school districts, large and small, have also adopted policies that restrict or ban cellphone use. More and more districts are relying on magnetically sealed bags to lock away the devices so students aren’t tempted to let them go during class.

The ability to contact someone in an emergency is the main reason parents say their children should have access to a phone at school, according to a survey of more than 1,500 parents of public school students in kindergarten through high school conducted in February by the National Parents Union.

But fatal school shootings are extremely rare. And while parents want to be able to reach their children in the event of a shooting or other emergency, phones “can actually put students’ safety at risk,” says Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm that specializes in school safety and emergency preparedness training.

“If you have 20 kids in a classroom and they’re texting, calling their parents or livestreaming, they’re not paying proper attention to adult instructions and aren’t fully aware of the situation, which they may need to do quickly to save their lives,” he said. “They only have seconds to follow instructions and change location.”

Phones can also cause other dangers, he said. Their ringing or buzzing can draw unwanted attention to classrooms where people are hiding. A rush of students calling home or 911 at the same time can overload phone networks or the emergency response system. And if parents rush to the school to check on their child after an alarming text message, it can block traffic, preventing emergency responders from getting in or out.

“Parents are going to come to school anyway, but cell phones are accelerating that rush,” Trump said, calling phones more of an “emotional comfort blanket for parents” rather than something that actually makes children safer.

Still, Apalachee High School students who were unable to contact their parents immediately said they felt even more fear during the shooting.

“I was shaking, scared and didn’t have my phone. I couldn’t talk to my mom for half an hour,” one teenager, who did not provide identification, told NBC affiliate WXIA in Atlanta. “I didn’t know what was going to happen because you could hear the gunshots all the way down the hall. I don’t know if that was my last chance to talk to her.”

According to Apalachee’s student handbook, cell phones are allowed in class under direct teacher supervision as long as they are used for educational purposes. Between classes and during lunch, students are permitted to use their electronic devices “appropriately,” the handbook states.

Kim Whitman, co-founder of the nonprofit advocacy group Phone-Free Schools Movement, called the school shooting “every parent’s worst nightmare,” but she said efforts to prevent further tragedies should not be focused on cell phones in schools.

“We need to address the school shootings,” she said. “We can’t allow this to continue. But that’s a different issue – it has nothing to do with the phone policy.”

Robin Gurwitch, a psychologist who specializes in caring for children after disasters and other trauma and is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University, said she understands why parents want to communicate with their children during such an event.

Still, she said, “It’s a very sad state of affairs that one of the reasons we believe we need to have phones in classrooms is so that students can call and say goodbye or let people know that something is happening when the shooting starts.”

Amy Klinger, program director for the national nonprofit Educator’s School Safety Network, said there is room for compromise.

She pointed to schools that have decided to keep students’ phones in locked bags in classrooms rather than lockers or elsewhere in the building, so teachers can quickly unlock them if needed.

“Parents who get a text message saying, ‘I’m OK,’ don’t have to go through the trauma that people went through on Wednesday,” Klinger said, referring to families who didn’t immediately hear from their children in Apalachee.

That’s exactly what middle schools in Marietta, Georgia, about two hours west of Apalachee, are doing. Each classroom has a device that allows the bags containing cell phones to be opened in an emergency, if it is safe to do so.

The decision was made after consultation with police, parents and teachers, Grant Rivera, superintendent of Marietta City Schools, told NBC Nightly News earlier this week.

“One of the things they explained to us was that we don’t want students to be distracted by their cell phones while listening to instructions and commands from adults who are trained in how to respond,” he said.

In Apalachee, lives were saved by activating an emergency alert system. The panic buttons on teacher IDs immediately notified the police of the problem.

Smartphones can do that too, Klinger says. But they’re also sometimes used to record emergencies rather than running away from them.

“We as a society have failed to really fight that notion and tell kids, ‘Get away from danger,’ whether it’s a tornado, a vicious dog, a fight or whatever,” she said. “Our culture says you run toward it and film it.”