Kara Alaimo is a professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University and advises parents, students and teachers on how to manage screen time. Her book “Over the Influence: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — And How We Can Take It Back” was published in 2024.

A parent recently told me she’s struggling to get her otherwise well-behaved and academically successful daughter to attend class. Her daughter is regularly late or absent, she complained, and her mom fears her daughter might not graduate high school and have her college admission rescinded.

What’s going on? Her mom, who encourages making mindful choices about technology at home, thinks using technology at school is leaving her daughter stressed and exhausted. Human beings have evolved to interact with one another, use our bodies and be outdoors — not stare at screens all day, she pointed out.

She’s just one of the many parents telling me they’re concerned about what screens in schools are doing to their kids. The vast majority of US public schools — 88% — now issue devices to every student, according to a 2025 National Center for Education Statistics survey. My own town’s public schools use a lot of technology, and I’m worried about my daughters, too.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised by the results of an otherwise baffling new study, which found students putting away their phones didn’t seem to meaningfully improve learning outcomes.

I suspect that’s because schools are giving students other forms of technology to replace their personal devices, despite a wide body of evidence showing that educational technology generally makes it harder for students to learn.

Students who use computers more perform worse academically, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath documented in his book, “The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning — And How To Help Them Thrive Again.” These results show up in numerous reliable international standardized tests, Horvath explained in congressional testimony.

Recently, public school officials in my town held a session in which they encouraged parents to get their kids off screens at home. It’s good advice, and I share it when I speak to parents across the country to offer tips and tricks about how to responsibly manage their kids’ screen time. But the problem is that those same (probably well-meaning) school officials are letting our kids use technology at school.

One parent told me her daughter’s middle school social studies teacher hasn’t taught a single lesson the entire school year. Her daughter just does exercises on a digital device.

“There could have been such good discussions on women’s rights, religion and power dynamics and yet now my daughter doesn’t care at all,” the mom said. “It is just about how she can get through the hours of online forms.”