By Mallika Seshadri, EdSource
With his headphones on and his face inches away from an iPad, Kate Brody’s first grade son was so engrossed that he didn’t realize he had to go to the bathroom.
He didn’t used to have accidents. But when screen time started to ramp up in his Los Angeles Unified School District classroom, that started to change. Now, Brody said, “he literally cannot tell that he has to go to the bathroom because he’s so overstimulated.”
“It’s addictive. It’s colorful. It’s meant to appeal to kids like candy,” she said. And while her son can’t connect the dots, he does feel embarrassed when his mom picks him up, a change of clothes in hand.
While a district spokesperson said that LAUSD “prioritizes screen value” — meaning technology “supports learning rather than how long it is used” — some parents like Brody aren’t convinced.
Brody joined Schools Beyond Screens, a coalition of LAUSD parents advocating for limits on classroom screen time, an issue expected to come before the school board in April, reflecting growing concerns about how heavy device use affects students’ learning, behavior and mental health.
If the resolution passes, it would require officials to set daily and weekly caps, to be approved by June and implemented the following school year.
The coalition is trying to “lobby the district to rethink some of this stuff,” Brody said, “and maybe put a tech policy in place for the first time that would outline healthy, safe, responsible use of technology so that we’re using tech in a way that’s effective — and not in a way that’s harmful and detrimental to kids’ cognitive and mental health.”
Ineffective cellphone bans
Many teachers and parents say that the district’s cellphone ban last year has been ineffective.
Vincent Kirk, an 11th grade English teacher at Belmont High School, asked his students, “Just for my own curiosity, how many of you have access to your phones right now?”
“And every single student will raise their hand.”
Students are often required to store their phones in magnetically sealed pouches, such as Yondr pouches. Kirk said students would place dummy phones inside or force the pouch open to access their devices.
Some students also take extended bathroom breaks to use their phones, and others bypass school Wi-Fi restrictions by connecting to personal hotspots.
Challenges in the classroom
Katie Pace, mother of three LAUSD students, doesn’t see herself as an anti-tech parent. Her children had weathered online learning during the pandemic, but six years later, her eldest is now in the eighth grade and completes all of her assignments on a Chromebook.
Math problems and science group projects are completed online; essays are in Google Docs and world language is on Duolingo.
Los Angeles Unified said that while it provides Chromebooks and tablets to students, “decisions about technology use are made at the school level, allowing principals and educators to implement technology in ways that best support their students and instructional goals.”
LAUSD says screen time is “structured and aligned with instruction,” with elementary students spending roughly 31 to 50 minutes and secondary students between 86 and 128 minutes on a screen during the school day.
“The District provides guidance and resources to ensure technology is used intentionally, supports effective teaching, and helps students engage with digital tools safely, critically, and responsibly,” a district spokesperson said in a statement to EdSource.
But Pace said her daughter’s in-class screen use tells another story. Her daughter streams music on Spotify and spends hours watching cat videos and makeup tutorials during class.
For these reasons, some teachers are changing things.
Kirk started requiring students to go 100% screen-free during class after he learned most students relied on AI for last year’s midterm papers. He said the first few months of this school year were marked by panic — and relearning basic skills, like how to write on lined paper correctly. But over time, students’ writing grew deeper and more intentional. Class participation skyrocketed, and students seemed generally calmer.
What Kirk has observed is consistent with research showing that writing and learning by hand lead to a student’s stronger understanding of material.
“Teens are at such a high risk of depression and anxiety and addiction, and this is such a crucial special period for them,” Pace said. “This is when they should be talking to each other and looking at their teachers and figuring out who they are.”
Screens at home
Los Angeles Unified claims screen time using district devices outside the school day is relatively low, averaging between nine and 15 minutes for elementary students and 24 and 44 minutes for those in middle and high school.
But Julie Edwards, a parent of a kindergartner and fourth grader, disagrees. Her eldest became immediately hooked on screens when she brought home a Chromebook from school.
“I just thought, ‘I can’t believe they’ve just handed me this massive problem,’ Edwards said.
She tried to hide the device, but that was short-lived because the school was mandating time on iReady. Her daughter would complete her math and then play Minecraft.
“She comes home, and all that time is spent on a screen,” Edwards said. “And that’s the time we get to be with her.”
Research has linked excessive screen time to negative impacts on children’s mental health, cognitive development, attention spans and academic performance. Still, LAUSD’s reported usage — in and beyond the school day — is generally consistent with guidance from experts at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
Those experts recommend up to an hour of screen use per day for children age 2 to 5, ideally with an adult present to engage with. For older children and teens, parents should set limits while prioritizing sleep and at least an hour of daily physical activity.
“Everyone should back up and really try to understand at the system level what the problem is,” said Stephen Aguilar, a professor of education at USC, who added that the challenges could be from the technology itself, or a need for additional training or the way everything is set up.
“But without taking this exhaustive look of how things are working within a particular learning environment, I think a lot of policies fall short, because they’re not attacking the problem. They’re just attacking what they see as the visible issue.”
Over time, Edward’s daughter grew “really dysregulated,” and they eventually decided to call it quits — with both the device and with the school, transferring her to a tech-free charter school in time for fourth grade. She’s planning to transfer her youngest out of LAUSD, too.
“Her mood is so much better. She is happy to use her imagination to figure out what to do with her time,” Edwards said, noting that she now will spend time on arts and crafts or go outside.
“She has such an awesome childhood. It’s so idyllic. It’s so much more idyllic than just sitting hunched over, scrolling.”
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