Why Screen Time Limits Are Not the Answer
School leaders across the country are spending their summers updating technology practices to comply with new screen time laws and policies. But a big question remains: Should schools focus on tracking the total time students spend on devices or more closely evaluate the benefits of each specific ed tech program?
The past few weeks have brought fast-moving changes at the state and local levels. For example, legislation mandating screen time limits in schools took effect July 1 in Utah, the first statewide, age-based expectations for K-12 technology use. At the local level, the Los Angeles Unified School District approved a strict new screen time policy that will be in effect for the upcoming school year.
At a fundamental level, these policies and laws aim to address academic achievement by balancing digital instruction with traditional teaching methods. But they do not tackle how the devices are used.
Accountability will be a challenge for school leaders going forward. They must hold ed tech providers to a higher standard, ensuring their products and services are proven to help students learn.
A Long Downturn in Academic Achievement
Achievement has been moving in the wrong direction since 2013, long before the pandemic, and long before 1:1 device use in schools became standard. The most recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, released in September 2025, reported declining test scores for twelfth and eighth graders. These NAEP scores align with other indicators of lagging achievement, such as generally falling SAT and ACT scores and stalled NWEA reading and math scores for grades kindergarten through second.
As a former middle school teacher, I lived and breathed the tireless work schools do to improve student performance. The challenge of triangulating and acting on data drove me to build Otus. I wanted my time spent on relationships, not piecing together spreadsheets.
While I strongly believe teacher-student relationships remain essential to academic success, technology also has a place in the classroom. Devices can be used to deliver powerful, differentiated experiences that offer meaningful practice. When devices are used to occupy time rather than teach, screen limits are needed.
But if technology can save educators time and provide a positive impact on student performance, then why would we limit that?
The Real Issue Is What Screens Replace
Device use should be a tool to help achieve a larger goal. Consider a scenario where students are in small groups debating their points. They could spend some time researching ideas on their devices, then go back to working together to engage with the material and each other. Crucially, the devices do not replace interaction; they inform the conversation.
In that example, students are being asked to support their thinking, defend their conclusions, and respond to questions in real time with real people. Entering one's thoughts in response to questions on a screen may prompt self-reflection, but it cannot replicate the experience of dialogic learning.
In some cases, the new limits — such as capping students' laptop use at no more than half their class time each day — are being enforced by having students and educators log their device use through a monitoring tool portal. Once again, schools going this route are opting to gather information about activity, not impact.
For creative pursuits requiring skilled use and cognitive work — like digital art, game coding, and video creation — having enough screen time to complete a task at the learner's own pace can lead to more thoughtful ideas and better problem-solving skills.
This is very different from producing academic work via generative AI, where students may experience the unproductive success of creating a correct-looking project without putting in the struggle to revise and refine. But in both cases, the amount of time spent on a screen could look the same.
Setting a Higher Standard for Ed Tech
Screen time deserves our attention, yes, but the problem of declining achievement will not be solved through a reactionary pendulum swing away from device use. Educators need to understand why students are not excelling so they can look for evidence-based solutions. This gets back to the question of tracking activity versus impact.
In its early days, the ed tech industry sold schools on measuring activity. Without tools to measure what actually matters or evidence to support companies' claims, activity metrics were the only option schools had.
But today we have years' worth of research into which applications and tools are most beneficial in boosting student outcomes. Now more than ever, schools need to collect and analyze comprehensive data about each student in order to understand more precisely what instruction and intervention will best support their learning. Educators need to be thoughtful about when devices bring better accessibility and personalization to classroom learning, and when a human connection would offer better results.
The coming school year gives educators, policymakers, and ed tech leaders an opportunity to dive into the data together, stop measuring screen time, and start measuring impact.