Education technology—including school districts’ 1-to-1 computing initiatives—impedes students’ ability to learn and offers a portal to platforms that harm children’s mental health, experts told lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee during a Jan. 15 hearing on technology’s impact on kids.
They urged policymakers to rein in schools’ use of digital devices and platforms, including those for educational purposes, and restrict student cellphone use at school.
“It doesn’t matter what the size of the screen is—if it’s a phone, if it’s a laptop, if it’s a desktop,” said Jared Cooney Horvath, a neuroscientist and co-founder of Learning Made Easy, an educational consulting organization. “It doesn’t matter who bought it. Is it school-sanctioned? Does it have the word education stamped on it? It doesn’t matter. All these things are going to hurt learning, which, in turn, are going to hurt our kids’ cognitive development at the time when we need our kids to be sharper than we are.”
Some education organizations, on the other hand, continue to make the case for a more nuanced view of technology’s role in teaching and learning.
The day before the hearing, 17 education organizations—including AASA, the School Superintendents’ Association; the Consortium for School Networking; and the State Educational Technology’s Directors Association—released a letter offering a prebuttal of the arguments presented.
They argued that technology—if properly used—can be a critical tool in differentiating instruction, making curriculum accessible for students in special education, and preparing students for the workforce.
“In reality, ‘screen time’ is not a single category and should not be evaluated as such,” the groups wrote in the letter. “Classroom use of digital tools … is fundamentally different from a student’s unsupervised or entertainment-based devices.”
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle made it clear that they are concerned about the impact of social media, AI chatbots, and other digital platforms on students’ mental health and privacy.
But there didn’t appear to be broad consensus on potential policy solutions—including whether Congress should place limitations on technology use in schools through the E-Rate, the largest federal fund for school connectivity. The Senate Commerce Committee oversees the Federal Communications Commission, which governs the E-Rate.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who chairs the committee, argued that the time students spend on digital devices in school—even for learning purposes—has contributed to a teen mental health crisis, while dragging down, not improving, academic outcomes.
“Parents intuitively know that excessive use of internet-connected devices like smartphones and tablets poses significant physical and mental health risks to children,” said Cruz, the father of two adolescent daughters.
Cruz added that “sadly, parents face further challenges in monitoring and limiting their children’s screen time, in part because our education system, fueled by federal subsidies and incentives, has increasingly required the use of connected devices in schools.”
Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., however, argued that technology can be used for good.
“Technology can be a force for good in children’s lives, but only if its benefits reach all kids, and only if we put strong guardrails in place to protect them from harm,” Markey said.
The debate over whether education technology is a critical learning tool or ineffective and detrimental to children’s well-being comes as billions in federal pandemic relief money—the bulk of which was provided under President Joe Biden and helped dramatically expand 1-to-1 device programs—has dried up as many of the devices it paid for are now near the end of their lifecycles.
The anti-ed-tech political headwinds on display in the hearing could spur state and local policymakers to tighten financial resources for digital tools and devices, as well as fuel parent backlash against tech in schools.
AI in schools could be source of political friction
The debate also comes as schools grapple with rapid developments in artificial intelligence. Districts initially banned AI after ChatGPT was released, but are now using the technology more with students for teaching and learning.
AI use in schools is a mistake, argued Emily Cherkin, a former teacher and the founder of the Screen Time Consultant, a consulting company advising parents on the harms of kids’ use of digital devices, one of three witnesses tapped by Cruz to testify at the hearing.
“I believe, absolutely, AI is making all of the existing problems of ed tech worse,” she said. “I don’t believe it belongs in the hands of children.”
The AI issue could become politically complex.
Back in April, the Trump administration issued an executive order calling for infusing artificial intelligence throughout K-12 education. A major focus of that plan is training teachers on how to integrate AI into their instruction and educating students on how to use it effectively.
Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, the top Democrat on the committee, argued that AI needs to be regulated, a case that AI companies themselves made at a House hearing on Jan. 13, the same week the Senate Commerce Committee explored the issue.
“We need to be very loud and clear that the federal government needs to do something on AI,” Cantwell said. The experts “are telling us the problem with social media, but you’re basically saying AI is worse. It’s time to step up.”
In the hearing, some of the experts also advocated for policies restricting students’ access to their phones from “bell to bell,” or during the whole school day.
The decline of kids’ mental health and academic performance that began around 2012 could be attributed to the increase in people’s access to smartphones and social media, said Jean Twenge, a psychologist and professor at San Diego State University.
At least 33 states, the District of Columbia, and Department of Defense Dependents Schools now require schools to ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones in school buildings, according to an Education Week tally. But the federal government has limited authority to address cellphones in schools.
Still, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, floated the possibility of a federally-mandated school cellphone ban.
“Having all the world’s information in your phone is probably not a great way to lock in when it comes to learning algebra or American history,” Schatz said, “so putting the damn thing away and making sure that no other kid has access to it is absolutely essential.”
E-Rate could be vehicle for curtailing ed tech in schools
While the vast majority of money for education technology comes from state and local sources, the federal E-Rate program has been key for schools’ internet connectivity.
Early in the hearing, Cruz criticized a Biden administration initiative to use E-Rate dollars for hotspots in students’ homes, saying it boils down to providing federal money that would enable students to access harmful content outside school hours.
The Senate passed a bill Cruz authored to repeal the hotspot program. That legislation is awaiting House action.
Jessica Rosenworcel, who served as FCC chair under Biden, argued that the plan was crucial to enabling students—particularly in rural areas—to complete homework assignments.
But Markey and other Democrats did not think limiting how E-Rate funds can be spent is the best way to alleviate the mental health problems attributed to students’ digital device dependence, or to improve learning.
“The E-Rate hotspots program was a responsible, carefully crafted effort to ensure that low-income students had the same opportunities as their wealthier classmates,” Markey said.
The effort to more heavily regulate youth access to social media and tech companies’ use of young people’s data has been largely bipartisan.
Cruz has introduced legislation, with Schatz, that would prohibit companies from pushing ads and other targeted content to kids under 17.
It would also call for requiring schools to make a good-faith effort to block social media on networks paid for with federal funding. (A summary of the legislation noted most schools already do this.)
Separately, Cruz has introduced legislation that would prohibit schools that get E-Rate dollars from allowing students to access social media platforms on subsidized services, devices, or networks.
There’s also been recent state-level action to curtail education technology use in schools.
For instance, a bill introduced by state lawmakers in Utah seeks to require ed-tech tools to meet certain standards and prove their efficacy before they can be used in public schools, according to the Deseret News. Another would limit screen time, including on ed-tech tools, particularly in early elementary school.
And in Missouri, a state lawmaker introduced a bill that would restrict digital instruction to 45 minutes a day for students in kindergarten through 5th grade. The measure would also require that 70% of student work be completed on paper, that students be taught cursive, and that teachers not assign homework that requires technology.
Can you really prepare students for careers without developing their tech skills?
In their letter, the education groups argued that technology in schools is essential to preparing students for the workforce of the future.
Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., asked how schools should teach science, math, engineering, and technology skills without tech.
Horvath, the neuroscientist, argued that STEM skills can and should be taught using old-fashioned pen-and-paper first.
“Technology is a tool for experts to offload their skills,” Horvath said. An expert might think, “‘I know how to do stats. I don’t feel like doing it. This tool helps me do it.’ They are not tools for novices to learn how to become experts.”
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., wanted to know how teachers and parents can tell if a particular educational technology product is high-quality.
Jenny Radesky, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School, suggested third-party reviews of ed-tech products.
If her own child were using a digital learning platform, “I’d want to know that it’s been tested, that it’s going to improve his math skills, that it is not selling data to third parties, and that it doesn’t have engagement-prolonging designs that are going to make him want to use it for hours and hours every day,” Radesky said.
Horvath, meanwhile, argued that ed-tech tools should be significantly limited, if not prohibited from schools altogether. Some Scandinavian countries, including Sweden, limit digital learning platforms to high school students, he said.
Those countries “just looked at the data [on ed tech] and said ‘let’s go back to learning,’” he said. “Whereas the rest of us look at that and say, ‘How can we make it work better? I could ask you, ‘how do I make anthrax better?’ Maybe the answer is you don’t. You go back to not using it.”
But Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., wondered if an important voice was missing from the hearing: That of tech companies who he argued benefit financially from addicting students to social media and harmful AI chatbots.
He suggested that lawmakers bring executives from big tech companies in and force them to respond to questions like, “‘When are they going to fix the damaging behavior of just lining their pockets with dollars at the expense of the health of kids all across America?’”
