Schools rethink classroom screens as parents warn of distraction

After years of buying laptops and tablets for nearly every student, schools are starting to pull back. The shift is being driven by a growing sense that constant device use is crowding out attention, handwriting, discussion and basic concentration, while federal health officials now say excessive screen exposure has become a public health concern.

On May 20, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the Surgeon General’s Office released a warning and toolkit on the harms of screen use. The advisory said adolescents average seven to nine hours a day on entertainment screens and that children and adolescents now spend as much or more time on screens as they do sleeping or in school. It urged schools to reduce or ban non-instructional device use, expand digital citizenship education and create more chances for in-person engagement.

In classrooms, the criticism is no longer theoretical. Anna Soffer, a Los Angeles middle school teacher, said the original push came from the belief that technology was the future, but many educators now see screens as a constant distraction. Notifications, games and the internet can pull students away from instruction in seconds, turning a device meant to support learning into a behavioral problem that teachers have to manage lesson by lesson.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says there are no specific screen-time limits for schools, but it draws a line between active use, such as coding and collaboration, and passive use, such as digital worksheets or simply consuming content. The academy also says about 90% of U.S. public schools now have enough laptops or tablets for every child, a sign that access is no longer the main issue. The question has become how often those devices should be used, and for what.

The pushback is visible far beyond Los Angeles. In Arlington, Virginia, parents have begun meeting to compare notes about screen addiction and the side effects they believe are tied to school-issued devices. Arlington Public Schools created an APS Device Work Group in September 2025 to review digital device use, gather survey input and deliver recommendations to the school board in March 2026.

Policy is moving too. On April 21, Los Angeles Unified School District voted unanimously to direct staff to create a screen-time policy for the 2026-27 school year, including grade-level limits and a plan to eliminate screen time for elementary students. Across the country, lawmakers in 16 states were debating bills to limit education technology in schools, and Alabama, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia had already passed some form of legislation since January.

The debate is no longer about rejecting technology outright. Screens still matter for accessibility, assistive technology and digital literacy. But after the pandemic-era rush to digitize classrooms, schools are being forced to decide where technology helps, where it distracts, and what a sustainable middle ground looks like.