Just a few years ago, America’s public schools were rushing to get every child a laptop. The idea was that technology is the future, so schools needed to put tech in every child’s hands. Billions of dollars were poured into laptops, tablets, and learning apps.
Now, the conversation has flipped. Classrooms have become saturated with screens, and a growing number of parents, teachers, and school districts are saying it is time to scale back.
“The Chromebook is just a world of distraction,” says Anna Soffer, a 6th grade English and history teacher in Los Angeles. She favors pen-and-paper assignments but is required to use laptops and online apps for certain activities. “Every day, I’m battling, ‘Who would you rather listen to, Ms. Soffer or Minecraft?'”
Soffer’s experience is not unique. Across the country, parents and teachers are reporting that school-issued devices have become vehicles for addiction, distraction, and hidden harm. The pandemic-era push to close the “digital divide” may have created a new crisis: a generation of children struggling to focus, write, and resist the lure of YouTube, games, and social media during class time.
The Los Angeles Crackdown
The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school system, recently became the first major district to say it will stop giving devices to its youngest students. A sweeping resolution passed last month requires the district to eliminate devices until second grade; set daily and weekly screen limits for all higher grades; block YouTube on school devices; and ban the use of devices at lunch and recess in elementary and middle school. The district will also audit its education technology contracts, which the teachers’ union says amount to $1.6 billion.
“We’re not Luddites,” said Nick Melvoin, the LAUSD school board member who drafted the resolution. “During the pandemic, getting kids devices was a lifeline. Now, it’s time that we reset.”
Melvoin estimates that few Los Angeles classrooms are using screens effectively in ways that benefit learning. Too often, he said, teachers are replacing instruction with online apps and using screens “as a crutch.”
The Parent Revolt
In Los Angeles, concerned parents last year formed a group, Schools Beyond Screens, and pressured the district by speaking out at school board meetings, on social media, and in private talks with administrators. Many are frustrated by trying to curb screen time at home, only to have screens mandated by school.
Katie Pace, a mother of three, does everything in her power to limit screens at home. There is one family iPad and one television. No screen time during the week. No screens allowed in bedrooms. Her 8th-grade daughter, Clementine, does not have a phone.
But as soon as Clementine gets on the wifi-enabled school bus, her day takes a turn for the digital. She watches YouTube videos on her school Chromebook during the 30-minute ride. In Spanish class, assignments are on Duolingo, but many students use Google Translate for answers. Often, kids play games on their phones, which are supposed to be locked away. In algebra, Clementine writes with her finger on a touch screen to solve equations. In history, quizzes, tests, and writing assignments are on the computer. Almost all homework is online.
On her daughter’s device history, Pace sees she spends hours a day streaming music, making Spotify playlists, and watching makeup tutorials and cat videos on YouTube.
“It makes me furious,” said Pace, a member of Schools Beyond Screens. “My daughter went to middle school and was sent home with a screen addiction in her backpack.”
The Evidence Problem
The challenge, educators say, is that technology has become so entwined with learning, especially for older students, that unplugging from screens at school is complicated. But the evidence for edtech’s benefits is surprisingly thin.
“If there’s really no evidence that it helps, and in fact there’s evidence that it’s harmful, what are we doing? Test scores are at their lowest point,” said Alex Bird Becker, one of the founders of PA Unplugged, a parent group in the affluent Philadelphia suburb of Lower Merion. The group launched a petition campaign for the right to opt children out of digital devices during school. The district has said that opting out is not possible.
The federal government issued an advisory last week warning that excessive screen use among youths is becoming a growing public health concern. At least 14 states have proposed laws to limit screen time in schools, according to Ballotpedia.
The Financial Argument
Some schools are finding that it makes financial sense to stop sending a device home with every child. Fresno Unified School District, the third-largest in California, is spending $4 million a year to repair and replace laptops. Partly to cut costs, the district has told its 40,000 elementary school students to return their take-home laptops and will shift computer access to in-class only in the fall.
The Simi Valley Unified School District, near Los Angeles, stopped sending devices home for its younger students this year partly because of costly repairs, but also because they were being used for “inappropriate Google searches” and video games, according to a memo to parents. The district now stores the devices in carts at school.
The Gathering in Arlington
A group of parents in Arlington, Virginia, gathered on a recent Saturday night to share their children’s struggles with screen addictions and other side effects of school-issued devices. They met in LuAnn Oliver’s living room.
“None of us are Luddites. I know that technology adds value, but I also don’t want my son on YouTube all the time,” said Oliver. Her 6th-grade son struggles to keep track of online assignments and resist the temptation the iPad offers for video games. “We get reports on websites he’s visited. He’s visiting a game site in nearly every class.”
Jenny Sullivan said she has noticed her 4th-grade son capitalizing random letters and not getting corrected because there is so little work on paper. She also worries about social implications: Her 6th grader doesn’t want to go to the after-school program because everyone is on their iPad. “I’d rather be home,” he tells his mother.
After a three-hour gathering, the parents made a plan to approach the school in the fall with a unified request to “opt-out of technology and opt-in to textbooks and paper.”
“Ten years from now,” said one of the mothers, Kristina Jackson, “I can’t imagine us looking back with any other reaction than: How could we have been so naive that we just handed these devices to our kids.”
The Bottom Line
America’s schools are facing a growing backlash against the digital devices that became ubiquitous during the pandemic. The Los Angeles Unified School District has passed a sweeping resolution to eliminate devices for young students, set screen limits, block YouTube, and audit its $1.6 billion in edtech contracts. Parent groups in Los Angeles, Lower Merion, Arlington, and elsewhere are pushing for opt-out rights and paper-based alternatives. At least 14 states have proposed laws to limit screen time in schools. The federal government has issued a health advisory on excessive screen use.
The experiment of putting a device in every child’s hand was supposed to close the digital divide and prepare students for a tech-driven future. Instead, parents and teachers say, it has created a world of distraction, addiction, and hidden harm.
