Science backs calls for limiting screens in schools

Last school year, every kindergartner entering the Los Angeles Unified School District was almost certain to spend some school time staring at a screen. This year, not so much. The school board for the nation’s second largest district has banned educational technologies, or EdTech, for kindergartners and first graders and is imposing strict use limits for others: a daily maximum of one hour for grades two to five and two hours for grades six to 12.

My own son struggled to manage his computer use in middle school in Vermont, so I have watched with keen interest as the pendulum has swung from the pandemic rallying cry of a device for every student to today’s calls for restricting school screen time from concerned parents, educators and policy makers.

Even before lockdowns, companies marketing EdTech promised that the devices and programs could improve academic outcomes by making learning fun and delivering personalized instruction. Mounting research suggests that promise has largely not been realized.

“The global evidence … exposes the ways unprecedented educational dependence on technology often resulted in unchecked exclusion, staggering inequality, inadvertent harm and the elevation of learning models that put machines and profit before people.” So says a damning 2025 book from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

But definitively proving social and academic harms from screen use in school is challenging, and many parents and educators say waiting to act is not an option.

Almost all U.S. students now have school-issued devices, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And data on EdTech use, though limited, suggests that screen time can take up a big chunk of the school day: up to four hours, per a 2021 nationally representative survey of 850 teachers. What’s more, school screen time increases with age, the New York Times reported in November. In the Times’ survey of 350 educators, 32 percent of elementary teachers said their students use screens for an hour or more per day compared with 86 percent of upper-school teachers.

EdTech’s proliferation in schools reminds Ben Woo of the arrival of cafeteria vending machines when he was growing up. “The new default lunch for the student body was a soda and a honey bun,” says Woo, a parent and volunteer with Schools Beyond Screens, an LA-based advocacy group that pushed for the new measures. With computers, he says, “schools are putting the honey buns and [sodas] in each kid’s hands.”

Independent research into any given EdTech program tends to be limited. So when school districts choose which program to purchase, they frequently consult company-funded research. Those findings can be misleading, scientists reported in 2020 in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness. When EdTech companies study their own programs, they find them to be nearly twice as effective, on average, than independent evaluators do. And companies appear incentivized to bury poor results, the team says.

EdTech can still help students learn, but it has limitations. Plenty of literacy programs for elementary students can help children decipher letter sounds, but few exist for more complicated skills like reading comprehension and written expression, studies have found.

EdTech use has also been linked with declines in test scores in the United States and abroad. The findings fall in line with multiple studies that show students who use a laptop to read and take notes tend to have lower comprehension levels, test scores and course grades than students who use paper. Even the best-designed EdTech programs can’t overcome this screen inferiority effect, says language and technology expert Naomi Baron of American University in Washington, D.C.

Baron’s own work looking at reading comprehension in some 300,000 U.S. fourth and eighth graders has found that reading on screens for just 30 minutes per day was associated with a decrease in scores on a national standardized test. The drop was particularly sharp in younger students, her team reported in 2023 in Reading and Writing. Those findings echo a link, reported by other researchers in 2022, between EdTech use and lower test scores on an assessment of reading, math and science literacy among 15-year-olds around the world.

The assumption, Baron says, is that encountering words on a screen or on a page shouldn’t make a difference in comprehension. The data consistently suggest otherwise.

Neuroscientists have been trying to figure out what’s going on in children’s brains when they learn using different mediums. In one small study of 15 children aged 6 to 8, reading a passage in print triggered brain activity linked with intense concentration and thinking while reading on a screen did not, researchers reported in 2023 in PLOS One. When children read from computer screens, they seemed to anticipate notifications and other distractions even though the computers weren’t connected to the internet, says study coauthor Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus, a developmental cognitive neuroscientist at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

In 2023, every sixth grader at my son’s school received a laptop and a warning from administrators that they’d penalize device misuse. Except they never caught my son.

He’s given me permission to tell his story. His semi-responsible
computer use deteriorated after a broken wrist. Sidelined during classes like orchestra and physical education, he was allowed to spend that time on his laptop. Soon, he was hooked on YouTube videos, watching on the sly during other classes and even exams. By the time his cast came off one month later, he was spending half his school day streaming videos.

“Your kid can get addicted to digital media at school even if they don’t have access at home,” says Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist and addiction medicine expert at Stanford University.

With enough time, even the most conscientious students can succumb to digital temptations, says educational psychologist Abraham Flanigan of the University of Georgia in Athens. “If you have devices in the classroom, unless you have really strong controls, you’re going to have distraction.”

But what constitutes strong control? My son’s device use flew under the radar because he didn’t try to access content that would have triggered the school’s monitoring software. And if the mere presence of screens distracts students, as Horowitz-Kraus’ research suggests, then even taking devices offline won’t fully resolve the problem. The current controls, it seems, aren’t strong enough.

Changes are afoot. At least 14 states are considering or have passed laws limiting in-school screen time. But policy change can be slow and childhood is short. Given that reality, my husband and I moved our son to a low-tech private school where he’s thriving. We are fortunate that we can afford the tuition and that our son’s tendency toward tech addiction was caught early enough for him to regain his footing. Still, I worry about all the other kids hiding behind screens. What does their future hold?