Screen time is now considered the biggest threat to student success. Districts and states are betting on cellphone bans to reverse the academic toll of excessive tech in the classroom.
This month, the Connecticut State Board of Education released guidance encouraging schools to adopt bell-to-bell cellphone and personal technology restrictions, the CT Mirror reports. The guidance comes after a 2025 survey from the Connecticut Education Association, which found that 57% of teachers cited cellphone use as a major classroom disruption.
At the district level, Florida’s Hillsborough and Pasco counties are shifting gears this school year to promote hands-on learning over excessive use of technology, WUSF reports.
Hillsborough County Schools, for example, isn’t getting rid of technology, but redefining how it’s used in the classroom. “We still want students to have that technology education,” the district’s Executive Director of Elementary Education Sarah Garcia told the news outlet. “We just want it to be used sparingly and really purposefully and intentionally.”
Hillsborough wants instructional technology use in grades 3 through 5 to allow for “movement, hands-on learning, and meaningful peer interaction,” the guidance reads.
Once students reach high school, their tech use will reflect the digital demands they’ll encounter in college and their careers.
How screens are impacting learning
These concerns reflect a broad conversation about how to maximize edtech while regulating screen time. More than 40% of teachers say students’ ability to focus has declined in the last five years, according to a new global survey of K12 teachers from McGraw Hill, an education solutions provider.
Most notably, 86% of K12 teachers say they’re concerned about declining/damage to student mental health. One leader says screens are hijacking their students’ attention.
“I think the biggest challenge technology presents to student learning today is competition for their attention, making it more difficult for them to sustain focus while persevering through challenging tasks, directions and assignments,” Miriam McKinney, a 7th-grade science teacher, said in the research.
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence also makes technology integration more challenging.
Overall trust in general AI chatbots, such as Copilot or ChatGPT, has declined 33% among educators in favor of the AI embedded in their edtech platforms, according to the report. Teachers insist that AI can never take the lead in the classroom, Sonja Capers, a language arts teacher at Paterson Public Schools, said in the research.
“As an educator, my job is to ensure that any tool used enhances learning by serving as a scaffold for learning rather than replacing human interaction and critical thinking,” she said.
Advice for leaders
Educators should view technology as a tool to augment instruction rather than replace teachers, former Chicago Public Schools superintendent Janice Jackson tells District Administration in an episode of the DA Changemakers podcast.
Meanwhile, schools should prioritize digital literacy to encourage students to use tech safely outside the classroom.
“When we don’t teach them digital literacy, when we don’t teach them how to be more discerning and take [technology] away, we put students at a disadvantage,” she told DA.
Here are a few of Jackson’s recommendations for leaders:
- Avoid “blanket bans” driven by fear
- Differentiate policy restrictions by developmental stage
- Focus on the “quality” of usage
- Invite teachers to lead the debate
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