When Lila Byock's oldest son was 11, she began to worry about how much time he spent on his school-issued iPad. It seemed as if he wasn't allowed to go anywhere without it.
"To the point that he was one day penalized for not having his iPad with him during PE class," she recalls.
She asked his school in central Los Angeles to explain why there was so much digital learning, even years after the COVID-19 pandemic: "There was no justification for why it was better," she said. "It was just sort of, 'Well, we got these things during COVID and might as well keep using them.'"
Byock started talking to fellow parents and formed Schools Beyond Screens, an advocacy group with thousands of parents, beginning in Los Angeles but eventually expanding around the United States. She says whenever she talks to parents, they all have the same question: "This is an emergency — what can we do about it?"
Last week, after months of petitions and demonstrations, the school board of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) voted unanimously to limit screen time for all grade levels, beginning in the fall, with a particular focus on eliminating it entirely for elementary-age students.
The move is an about-face for a district that, since the pandemic, has focused on bringing technology into the classroom.
States sprint to limit screen time
The shift in the nation's second-largest school district aligns with a flurry of recent state movement. Since January, Alabama, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia have passed some form of legislation to reevaluate technology's role in education instruction and assessment, and more than 10 other states are considering similar restrictions.
T. Philip Nichols, an associate professor of English education at Baylor University, called the move by LAUSD "the pendulum swing."
Nichols, who has researched technology's role in public education for years, says all the recent activity is a shocking but welcome surprise. The proliferation of laptops, tablets and interactive whiteboards, he said, "aren't just neutral tools. They shape the ways that we think. They shape the way that we communicate."
Proposed legislation in Vermont recently cited Nichols' work in a bill that would allow parents to opt their kids out of screen time. His research argues that widespread computer use has not delivered on higher test scores or student achievement.
The Vermont bill also raises concerns about student data privacy.
"These platforms are … also gathering data about how students are participating in them so that they can sell products back to schools," Nichols said. "When you are reading a textbook, that textbook is not reading you back."
How much tech is too much?
Still, some advocates note decades of research on the potential for computers and technology to streamline learning and provide useful information for students and educators.
Tracy Weeks, the senior director of education policy and strategy at the education technology company Instructure, says rushing to broadly ban screen time in schools is rash: "It's sort of throwing the baby out with the bathwater."
Instructure creates digital classroom-management tools like Canvas and Mastery, used by about 30% of K-12 students nationwide.
"When we talk about things like screen time," she says, "[it] gets really hard because not all minutes are equal depending on what you're actually doing."
She argues that doomscrolling and passively watching videos are different from the interactive activities that many teachers use to keep kids engaged.
A bipartisan push
LAUSD's vote to limit screen time gave district administrators a June deadline to craft an official policy. The directive also seeks to roll out the new rules this fall in classrooms. Parents and teachers will not know the scope of those rules until sometime this summer.
The projected rollout in LA is fast but echoes other proposed legislation. In Utah, a back-to-basics law to limit screen time goes into effect on July 1 and gives the state board of education until the end of the calendar year to draft a new policy for schools, though when that will be enforced in classrooms is still unclear.
"We're trying to help kids build healthier habits with technology," Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, said in a press conference. "We're not going to get this exactly right on the first try, but we're certainly moving in the right direction."
In Missouri, the state House passed a bill on limiting screen time this spring. The proposal, like others making their way through state legislatures, was introduced by a Republican lawmaker. The bill passed with strong bipartisan support in the House and is now on its way to the state Senate.
Kathy Steinhoff is a Democratic state representative and former teacher who ended up voting for the Missouri bill. She says that at first she was dubious: "When I saw that bill and I was like, 'Oh, there's no way that I could get behind this.'"
The initial proposal called for no more than 45 minutes of screen time per day and mandated cursive writing instruction. Steinhoff says she understood the research behind the proposal but did not agree with prescribing such rigid instructions for teachers.
"Teaching is a bit of an art," she said. "And when you try to make it more of a checklist … it loses its ability to really, I think, have a meaningful education for our kids."
Eventually, though, she said changes in the legislation made it less rigid and gave school districts more room to set their own policies.
The version that passed Missouri's House is similar to the one LAUSD voted on — school districts must come up with their own policies on limiting screen time.
The big difference? The timeline. Steinhoff argued that even the 2027 deadline in Missouri's current bill is too tight a turnaround.
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