As a parent, the allure of giving screens to your kids is undeniable. Exhausted after a hectic day or sick with your fourth cold of the winter, you need a break. And the screen is always there. It calms the whines and quiets the requests. When a screen is babysitting, there are no new messes and no new fights. Best of all? Your kids are happy. Like it or not, in front of a screen is where many of them want to be.
But all that glitters is not gold. Despite the instant gratification, significant screen use in kids and adolescents is associated with an uptick in a range of problems, from attention difficulties and increased anxiety and depression to obesity, aggression and bullying, and more. With more screen time, parent-child relationships can become strained, sleep patterns get disrupted, and kids go outside less.
These findings are confirmed again and again, year after year. And many parents are catching on. But as parents implement screen time boundaries at home, schools appear to be doing the opposite.

The new public school flex? “One-to-one computing.” One device per kid.
In West Michigan, Grand Haven Public Schools’ 1:1 Student Device Program ensures elementary students each get their own iPad in the classroom. Older students are issued a Google Chromebook to take home every night.
Today, 94% of public schools nationwide give digital devices to every student. Back in 2001, the average Michigan school had just 13 pupils to each internet-connected computer. About two computers per classroom.
It begs the question: Are kids learning more now that every student has their own device? In Michigan, that’s be a big fat NO.
Across the state, less than 40% of third graders are proficient in reading. In Detroit (where a program called Connected Futures recently used $23 million to distribute tablets to students during the pandemic) only 5% of eighth graders demonstrated reading proficiency.

Okay, then maybe students are better behaved? A recent study found that 1 in 4 Michigan educators had been physically injured by a student. The majority dealt with verbal outbursts big enough to warrant evacuating other kids.
More physically fit? Nearly 20% of Michigan youth aged 10-17 are obese.
Happier? Nearly 14% of Michigan children aged 3-17 were diagnosed with or reported anxiety or depression—up from 11.9% in 2016.
“Correlation does not imply causation,” I can hear someone say. Come on. Look around. The entire world of most kids and adolescents centers around screens. Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Netflix. If you’ve ever seen a child go from not using a screen to using one, you know it’s like watching someone be put under. A blanket of quiet comes over them, and they grow still. Their eyes go steady and glaze over.

Kids should be reading books, drawing and coloring, interacting with classmates and friends, going outside, running, jumping, building, and experimenting. Not sitting in front of a bunch of colored pixels in a black box. Nothing on a screen is real. Whatever’s going on there either already happened, never happened, or is happening far away.
Is it too much to ask that kids be engaging with the real world, in real time, while at school?
A recent bill proposes Michigan K-12 students be forbidden from using smartphones at all during school. That’s great, but maybe we should go further. With the huge list of well-established drawbacks associated with screen use, shouldn’t we also dial back the digital learning? How did we do it before? If they’re so important for educating kids, how did we thrive for so long without them?

Right now, there are no limits to how much screen time a Michigan public school student can have during the school day. Childcare centers and group homes have screen limits, but schools do not.
Many parents who are aware of the negative effect still don’t know how often their kids are on devices at school. Even if you’re doing your best to reduce screen time at home, the school has your kids for eight hours a day. If they’re not doing their part, it’s a losing battle.
When it’s obvious that more screen time for kids causes more problems across the board, the answer should be a no-brainer. Limit technology in schools. Cut the number of devices in classrooms.
Let’s stop hurting our kids with more and more screen time.
Faye Root is a writer and a homeschooling mother based in Northern Michigan. Follow her on X @littlebayschool.