California’s Los Angeles Unified School District has become the first major school system to impose screen time limits in schools.
The school board voted 6- 0 on Tuesday, with one refusal on the proposal, which calls for “developmentally appropriate guardrails on instructional technology for all grade levels,” according to the district.
It also restricts younger students’ use of school-issued devices, prohibits “student-led” use of YouTube and other streaming platforms, and requires the district to present a public report on all existing classroom technology contracts.
“With the rapid rise of technology and the growing research on its impacts, a policy addressing screen time for our youngest learners is long overdue,” Board Member and co-sponsor Karla Griego said in a statement.
Addressing concerns
The pushback against screens in schools is a concern even among the nation’s leading edtech pioneers. Khan Academy founder Sal Khan told District Administration last month that regulating screens is “common sense,” and that schools could do more to expand regulation to include social media limits in clubs and extracurriculars.
“In my own house, we’ve banned Instagram for our kids, and they’re like, ‘Oh, but the robotics team requires us to use Instagram,’” Khan said. “I would even put pressure on clubs, because there are other mechanisms they can use that might not be quite as sexy as Instagram, but I would definitely take a hard look at that kind of stuff.”
LAUSD’s decision comes after months of pressure from a parent group called Schools Beyond Screens, which took to board meetings and social media to lobby administrators about the problems their children faced after being administered Chromebooks and iPads, NBC News reports.
In previous interviews, parents told NBC News that their children’s grades had fallen because of increased screen time. According to the parents, their children played video games during instruction, watched YouTube and scrolled social media.
Some of the district’s middle schools also reserved one day a week for students to complete online math and reading quizzes, disrupting unrelated courses like music and science, according to the news outlet.
Complaints emerged as early as last fall. During a September board meeting, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho dismissed screen time concerns as “newly informed privilege,” NBC News reports.
“Do we have a specific digital tool addiction in America? Yes, we do—schools are not the reason, not even close,” he said during the meeting. “Parental responsibility is very much part of this equation.”
Carvalho was placed on leave in February following allegations of ties with AllHere, a tech company the district entered a multimillion-dollar partnership with to develop Ed, a personalized AI chatbot assistant for students and parents.
In an appearance on District Administration’s podcast in 2024, Carvalho touted Ed as a transformative technology that “addresses every single issue students may be facing.”
“It’s your best friend, your concierge, your personal assistant, your buddy,” Carvalho told DA. “Ed is transforming a school district of 540,000 students into 540,000 schools of one for everyone.”
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