Not all screen time is equal

Key points:

With the growing movement to limit technology in schools, parents and educators are right to question how much time students spend on screens. But, as schools reconsider the role of technology in the classroom, an important distinction is often getting lost in the public conversation: Not all screen time is equal.

For example, there is a clear difference between students interacting with an AI bot versus engaging in meaningful learning using an intentionally-designed online program that delivers personalized learning experiences. The right technology can expand the capabilities of a teacher while helping students engage in research-backed practices that lead to real and continuous progress.

The movement’s over-simplification around screen time and the use of technology comes at a particularly important moment for schools and students. Reading achievement, in particular, remains a significant challenge for many students because large percentages of our student population, including adolescent learners, struggle with fluency, comprehension, and foundational reading skills. For students to be successful in these areas and ultimately become strong and confident readers, they need ongoing and intentionally-designed practice opportunities that lead to automaticity and fluency. Without these skills they cannot understand what they read—meaning is lost in the effort.

The challenge is that providing this kind of individualized practice consistently is extremely difficult for even the most skilled teachers. In a classroom of 20 to 30 students, teachers must balance instruction, behavior, engagement, assessment, and intervention while addressing a wide range of learning needs.

Technology, when it is designed around how learning actually occurs, provides a solution. The value of technology is its ability to create learning conditions that are difficult to sustain consistently through traditional teaching means alone. Well-designed literacy tools, for example, can adjust practice in response to student performance, provide immediate feedback, vary learning tasks, and ensure that students spend sufficient time strengthening their foundational skills.

To be clear, technology is by no means a substitute for teachers, coaches, or reading specialists. Effective reading instruction depends on knowledgeable educators who build relationships, teach new concepts, guide students through challenging material, and help foster their motivation and confidence. Technology cannot replace these human interactions, but it can support meaningful and effective practice that enables students to effectively participate with their teachers and peers during instruction.

As such, critics of educational technology are correct to demand evidence. Schools should ensure all digital products—or any instructional materials for that matter—are grounded in research and incorporate research-backed practices throughout. But lumping all of these products into the same bucket and limiting their use in today’s classrooms simply because they appear on a screen is wrong.

The conversation around screen time should not be about whether it is inherently good or bad and how many minutes of screen time is acceptable. It should be about how screen time is being spent and whether or not individual technologies, programs, and digital learning experiences are supporting student growth and achievement. Not all screen time is equal.