Screens have taken over classrooms. Even students have had enough.

Summary
Educators question whether the rapid shift toward more technology has benefited learning. ‘I really lose my focus.’Class time has become screen time in American schools.
Kindergartners now watch math lessons on YouTube, counting aloud with the videos. Middle-schoolers complete writing drills on Chromebooks while sneaking in play of an online game. High-schoolers mark up Google Docs to finish group projects.
The rapid tech transformation amounts to a grand experiment playing out in American schools. Accelerated by pandemic-era online learning, the move has happened with little debate, conflicting research and high stakes for the nation’s children.
Educators wonder whether the digitization of the classroom has really benefited learning—or if it’s done kids a disservice. Some teachers say online tools help create more engaging lessons and provide personalized instruction. Others say the screen-heavy approach has distracted students and burned out teachers.
“Covid really shifted things toward, ‘Oh, we can do this,’" said Stephanie Galvani, a middle-school English teacher in suburban Boston. “But we didn’t ask: ‘Should we do this?’"
Students used their school-issued laptops in San Antonio.
The shift runs counter to the prevailing advice from doctors and psychologists to limit tech use. Some frustrated parents are trying to opt their kids out of school technology, with varying degrees of success. Even some students pine for more analog methods.
“I don’t like having my eyes glued on a screen for a while," said eighth-grader Aubrey Ortiz, in San Antonio. “It gives you a headache and I really lose my focus."
Students in grades one through 12 now spend an average of 98 minutes on school-issued devices during the school day—more than 20% of the average instructional time—according to data that educational software company Lightspeed Systems analyzed at the request of The Wall Street Journal.
The time spent on devices peaks at two hours and 24 minutes daily in sixth grade, or nearly 35% of instructional time, Lightspeed’s analysis of more than 2.8 million students in 344 school districts nationwide shows. Use of school devices declined among high-school students, down to 70 minutes a day for 12th-graders, with possible factors including a shift to personal devices and more flexible school schedules, according to Lightspeed.
Fifty percent of teachers said their students completed at least half of their classwork on a device, up from about 20% of teachers before the pandemic, according to a 2023 survey of nearly 1,000 educators conducted by Brian Jacob, an education researcher at the University of Michigan. Use of technology for homework, group work and assessments also dramatically increased.
Research on the effectiveness of tech use in education is mixed and full of company-backed analyses. “I don’t think there’s one easy answer," Jacob said. “I just don’t think we know yet."
‘Paper is better’
On an August day in Abby Ramos Stanutz’s San Antonio classroom, 25 eighth-graders filed into first-period English and began class as they often do, with several minutes of free writing. The students each grabbed a school-issued Chromebook and began to type.
“I know your fingers are getting tired, but keep going," Ramos Stanutz urged, dimming the lights and playing pop music softly to help students focus.
Students in San Antonio used laptops for a free-writing exercise.
Later in the class, the students turned back to Chromebooks to record influencer-style videos explaining why they liked a book they were reading.
Some of Ramos Stanutz’s students later explained that while they like the ease of turning in assignments online and using computers for technical skills like coding, the devices create distractions in class and can slow down lessons when the internet goes out or a video a teacher wants to play gets blocked by district software.
“I feel like paper is better, anything other than technology," said 14-year-old Carlos Miranda. “I’m hands-on. You can’t learn to dissect a frog with a computer." (Education technology companies have, actually, created virtual dissection apps.)
Ramos Stanutz said there’s no getting rid of technology at this point but she’s learned to strike the right balance. She’s had to find new strategies to keep students from playing online games or watching videos.
“It’s like the ocean: You can never turn your back on it," she said.
Abby Ramos Stanutz.
Computer and internet use in schools grew rapidly in the 1990s, alongside technology’s rise in everyday life. Schools saw an opportunity to close a digital divide between low-income and wealthier students.
The adoption of school technology sped up when the pandemic forced students to learn online. Federal Covid aid helped schools buy students across the country their own laptops or tablets. A multibillion-dollar education-technology industry promised its products could revolutionize teaching and catch students up after the pandemic.
Highline Public Schools in Washington state found itself unintentionally thrust into a pre-internet era this school year when a cyberattack shut down its system for more than a month.
Sixth-grade math teacher Rachel Nielsen said she initially panicked at not being able to access the digital curriculum—the only way she’d taught since becoming a teacher in 2019.
She soon came to embrace methods like using physical tiles and cubes to teach geometry. Students worked together on presentations using large poster boards. Nielsen found students explained their work better when they had to physically write rather than simply plugging answers into online programs.
“We got really bogged down by all the possible things we could use that are digital," Nielsen said. “Now I’m realizing it isn’t about more technology or another app."
‘I don’t like having my eyes glued on a screen for a while,’ said eighth-grader Aubrey Ortiz.
‘Too good to be true’
Research on the use of technology in education remains unsettled.
For instance, a review of 24 studies published last year found that college students retain more information when they take notes by hand rather than on a computer. Some research has found students have better comprehension when reading on paper rather than on a screen.
Other research on specific technology products—including digital tutoring programs—has shown improvements in student learning.
Richard Culatta, the head of an association that supports teachers’ use of technology, said lessons using technology have to elevate what the teacher could otherwise do to be effective.
“Does it spark curiosity? Or is it just presenting information?" Culatta said. “That distinction right there makes it clear pretty quickly whether the tech use is valuable."
Some teachers say they find technology essential for assisting students with specific needs, like using instant-translation apps for recently arrived immigrants or software to make fonts more readable for students with dyslexia.
Technology companies often tout internal analyses claiming their products have led to breakthrough gains in student learning. But such results are often overstated, and companies may choose not to release unfavorable findings.
“It’s really hard to move the needle on student achievement, so if you see something that’s too good to be true, it probably is," said Betsy Wolf, a researcher who found in a 2020 paper that company-backed studies produced more positive findings than independent evaluations.
IXL Learning, the company behind popular digital education platform IXL, touts that schools using the product score as much as 15 to 17 percentile points higher on state exams.
Students in Ramos Stanutz’s English class.
The most rigorous published evaluation of the product—which is used by 15 million U.S. students—was less impressive. A Johns Hopkins University research center report, commissioned by the company, found that IXL had no clear effect on state math scores during the spring of 2023 in a Michigan school district. On a different test, IXL boosted math scores by about five percentile points, the researchers found.
In a separate, unpublished Johns Hopkins study—a summary of which was reviewed by the Journal—the effects of IXL were described as “directionally positive" but “not statistically significant." The company chose not to release the study, a spokesman said, because it had a relatively small sample size.
Bo Bashkov, senior manager of research at IXL Learning, said the company’s figures of 15 to 17 percentile points are “better-case scenario" benchmarks from its own state-by-state research.
Removing barriers
In lower-income districts, school leaders say giving students and their families access to personal devices has been a huge benefit. Computer access is now nearly universal in U.S. public schools, with 95% of schools reporting that they provided devices to students last school year, according to a federal survey.
“It has removed barriers," said Pamela Maddox, the principal of Compton Early College High School, a high-performing school in a district serving majority Latino and Black students. Parents tell her they like that students can easily access their homework from anywhere.
The school has doubled down on technology, moving its library into a smaller room to make way for a high-tech lab funded by Verizon, equipped with a podcasting room, robotics equipment, 3-D printer and esports stations.
On a walk through campus in September, Maddox entered an Advanced Placement English class taught by Porsja Dyer. There, students sitting with Chromebooks typed out reflections on factors that have shaped their identity. Their responses were instantly shared with the entire class.
“And yes, I turned the hearts on so you can like each other’s work today," Dyer said.
At one table, students looked up from their screens to say they liked using technology in class because they can find information and write responses more quickly and it makes life easier.
Reducing technology
Many parents are content with the growth of educational technology. In one survey from 2023, commissioned by the nonprofit EdChoice, about three in four parents said that computer use was having a positive effect on their child’s learning.
Still, about 40% of parents said their children spent too much time on screens. In a separate EdChoice poll, 35% of teenagers said their school used too much technology.
‘I think we were all sold a lie that this was going to completely revolutionize education,’ said Andrea Davis, a mother of five.
“For parents who want to reduce screen time, schools are undercutting them," said Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business whose recent book, “The Anxious Generation," helped fuel smartphone bans in schools across the country.
Mileva Repasky, a mother of three in Phoenixville, Pa., who co-founded the nonprofit Phone-Free Schools Movement, had her children track their school and home screen use for two weeks at the Journal’s request.
One Wednesday in October, her 17-year-old son, David, spent nearly 2½ hours on his school-issued Chromebook doing work at school and an additional 70 minutes doing homework on his Chromebook. That was on top of the 42 minutes at lunch watching TikTok and Netflix on his phone that day and 80 minutes at home gaming or looking at Instagram. Total screen time: more than 5½ hours.
He said he learns better when taking notes on paper and that he’d like it if classmates would talk to each other more during lunch. His mom said she had no idea David was spending so much time on his laptop for school.
“The entire day is filled with technology," said David, a junior at a private high school. “We use our computers from first period to eighth period, and even at lunch there’s no socializing because everyone is on their phones playing games."
Repasky’s nonprofit and other advocacy groups have helped usher in a wave of cellphone bans at the school-district and state level in recent years, though enforcement is often a challenge and phones are still pervasive on many campuses.
Mom of five Andrea Davis wasn’t happy with the prevalence of technology in her local public school district in Hood River, Ore. “I think we were all sold a lie that this was going to completely revolutionize education," she said.
Davis, who runs a business that helps families reduce screen time, worked with the district to organize student and community meetings and presented a formal plan on how to reduce technology use. This school year, the middle-schoolers aren’t bringing school-issued iPads home with them, and the district is making sure every tech application is educationally sound. School leaders didn’t take up other recommendations, like banning YouTube and eliminating iPads in early-grade classrooms.
“There’s this misconception that we’ve let the cat out of the bag," Davis said. “But no, this is an opportunity we have now."
Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com, Matt Barnum at matt.barnum@wsj.com and Julie Jargon at Julie.Jargon@wsj.com