America’s schools face a backlash on digital devices as screens saturate
classrooms
[May 26, 2026]
By JOCELYN GECKER
Just a few years ago, America’s public schools were rushing to get every
child a laptop. Los Angeles middle school teacher Anna Soffer remembers
it well: “The idea was that technology is the future, so we need to put
tech in every child’s hands.”
Now, the conversation has flipped. After pouring billions of dollars
into laptops, tablets and learning apps, many schools are facing a
digital reckoning. 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 Soffer, who
teaches 6th grade English and history. 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?'”
The Los Angeles Unified School District, where Soffer teaches, recently
became the first major school district to say it will stop giving
devices to its youngest students. It is part of a new screen-time policy
taking effect in the fall across the country’s second-largest school
system.
A sweeping resolution passed last month by the Los Angeles school board
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.
The Los Angeles crackdown is adding momentum to calls for reform
emerging around the country. In many cases, parents lobbied a few years
ago for school cellphone bans, which have now become the norm. Realizing
phones weren’t the only classroom distraction, they pivoted to a new
target: school-issued devices.
The campaign for change is becoming a public policy issue. At least 14
states have proposed laws to limit screen time in schools, according to
Ballotpedia. The federal government issued an advisory last week warning
that excessive screen use among youths is becoming a growing public
health concern.
Parents say school-issued devices undermine screen limits at home
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.
As a mother of three, Katie Pace does everything in her power to limit
screens. There is one family iPad and one television at home, no screen
time during the week and 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.
For the 30-minute ride to school, Clementine watches YouTube videos on
her school Chromebook.
In Spanish class, assignments are on the app Duolingo, but many students
use Google Translate for answers, Clementine said. Often, kids are
playing 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. Until recently, Clementine would come
home and read a book, her mother said, but not anymore. 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 pandemic supercharged student access to devices
A push to put a device in every child’s hand and close the “digital
divide” started over a decade ago but it accelerated during the COVID-19
pandemic.
Overnight, education shifted online in March 2020. Schools raced to get
kids the devices needed to connect to school. When the 2021-2022 school
year started, 96% of U.S. public schools reported they had given digital
devices to students who needed them, according to the National Center
for Education Statistics.
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Kristina Jackson, right, talks about the overwhelming amount of
screen time that happens at their children's school during a meeting
with fellow school parents, Saturday, May 9, 2026 in Arlington, Va.
(AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)
Many schools switched funding away from textbooks, workbooks and
paper printouts to digital alternatives. Educational technology, or
edtech, exploded into a multibillion dollar industry.
“During the pandemic, getting kids devices was a lifeline. Now, it’s
time that we reset," said Nick Melvoin, the LAUSD school board
member who drafted the new resolution.
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.”
Some schools are introducing new limits
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.
In the affluent Philadelphia suburb of Lower Merion, parents
launched a petition campaign for the right to opt their children out
of digital devices during school, citing questions about edtech’s
benefits. The district has said that opting out is not possible.
“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
the group PA Unplugged.
Other 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, spokesperson AJ Kato said.
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.
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.
“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 LuAnn Oliver,
who hosted the group in her living room. 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.”
The Arlington School District has stopped giving iPads out before
first grade and is setting new limits in elementary school, but
students in 6th to 12th grades will still be required to have
school-issued devices.
Another mother, 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 afterschool
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.”
___
Associated Press writer Sharon Lurye contributed to this report from
Philadelphia.
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