By Kayla DeKraker
Despite schools touting technology as a classroom essential, parents are pushing back.
Research mounts by the day indicating that screentime – especially time on personal devices – is harmful to the developing brain. Parents around the world have stepped up to fight the technology addiction, only to be bypassed by school’s iPad usage.
Lyla Byock, the mother of a middle-schooler, told NBC News how her son routinely used the school iPads to play games and watch YouTube during instruction time.
This caused her son’s grades to plummet.
NBC News reports other parents expressed similar concerns with how the school screens negatively impacted their children.
Byock and other parents had enough, and created a group called Schools Beyond Screens.
The website of the group reads, “We’re a grassroots coalition of parents & teachers throughout the LA area, resisting the influence of Big Tech in our public schools.
Related: Adolescence Screen Time Spikes Risk of This Mental Health Disorder
They noted, “We’re not anti-technology, but the research is clear: excessive screen time is detrimental to learning, exposes kids to inappropriate content, encourages digital distraction & addiction, and infringes on privacy rights.”
Several studies dive more into the concerns of screen use in the classroom.
One study out of MIT found that one critical element is missing from online learning: human interaction. The state, “researchers found that three- and four-year-old children had more activation in language regions of the brain when they read a book with an adult like a parent than when they listened to an audiobook or read from a digital app. When they read on an iPad, activation was lowest of all. In another study, MRI scans of eight- to 12-year-olds showed stronger reading circuits in those who spent more time reading paper books than those who spent their time on screens.”
iPad use in school seems almost ironic, especially in Los Angeles, where many schools have banned cellphones.
According to the Institute of Educational Science:
About 9 in 10 public schools (88 percent) have a 1-to-1 computing program that provides every student a school-issued device, such as a laptop or tablet for the 2024–25 school year. Among these schools:
-
Eighty-nine percent make laptops available to students, and 27 percent make tablets available.
-
Forty-six percent allow students to bring their device home on school days and weekends, while 37 percent do not allow students to bring their device home.
-
Compared to the national percentage (46 percent), a higher percentage of schools with the following characteristics allow students to bring their device home on school days and weekends:
-
Schools with 1,000 or more students (86 percent)
-
High/secondary schools (80 percent)
-
Middle/combined schools (67 percent)
-
-
For parents like Byock, the answer is clear: Opt out of screens at school, and the child receives an education that’s not built on stimulation and addiction.
Read Next: Are We Surprised? An Hour of Play Is Better Than Screen Time
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
– Content: +1Share:
– Content: +1