Policymakers are Looking to Cut Down Kids’ Screen Time. Ed Tech Could Be Included in That.

Parents and mental health experts are increasingly concerned that excessive screen time may harm students. And as policymakers move to impose new limits on the amount of time children spend looking at screens, they’re often lumping classroom ed-tech tools together with social media and other consumer-focused products, leaving education companies caught in the crossfire.

Advocates for education technology say a differentiation has to be made between products that are used for student learning and other entertainment apps.

Ed-tech companies need to do a better job of explaining the role their products play in learning, said Erin Mote, CEO of InnovateEDU, a nonprofit focused on improving policy and practice in schools through technology.

Mote also heads the EDSAFE AI Alliance, a coalition of organizations that focus on the safe and equitable use of AI in education.

“What we’re seeing here is a policy response to a concern that parents have about consumer tech — about cell phones in schools and about things like social media,” Mote said. “And because we haven’t done a good job of drawing the distinction between consumer tech and ed tech, we’re losing our social license to innovate and to use this technology to further learning, access, inclusion, and so many things.”

In response to a push for new regulations, the Software & Information Industry Association, an organization that represents education technology interests, published a guide last month intended to help ed-tech companies and others explain key differences between education technology and consumer technology.

Sara Kloek, the association’s vice president of education policy, said the organization frequently addresses the differences with a wide variety of audiences, including its own members and public policymakers at all levels. Because that process often involves spelling out legal frameworks and regulatory considerations around data protection, student privacy, accessibility, and evidence of effectiveness, the organization gathered that information to publish as a resource, she said.

“When you’re thinking about children’s safety, if you bluntly say no to screen time, then you’re blocking out those opportunities for active learning and active engagement that can happen on a device, just like they can happen in the classroom,” Kloek said. “We thought it could be helpful to partners and policymakers to have those questions and answers all in one place, just to serve as a reference.”

Among the topics the document covers are:

• Federal mandates that ed-tech must follow around student privacy and data protection, including the prohibition on targeted advertising and rules that limit how student data can be used.
• Federal mandates that require equitable access to learning for students with disabilities that may require the technology use.
• Requirements that products must show evidence of effectiveness if they are supported with federal funds.
• Purchasing requirements that require compliance for school district expectations around data management, cybersecurity, and alignment with state education standards.
• How ed tech integrates with instruction, assessment, and information management systems.

Kloek said the guide is also intended to provide support for talking to parents about how they distinguish between ed tech and consumer tech with their children.

“Some people who think about privacy protections [may ask] what sort of privacy protections are there? Is this safe for my kid to use?” she said. “They may ask, what do I need to think about? Why is the school recommending this instead of this? They’re able to guide those conversations a little bit with the resources that are in [the document].”

The guide was published the week after a much-discussed Jan. 15 hearing of the U.S. Senate’s Commerce Committee, at which mental health and other experts testified that policymakers should rein in the use of digital devices and platforms at schools, even if they are used for educational purposes.

Jared Cooney Horvath, a neuroscientist and co-founder of Learning Made Easy, an educational consulting organization, said at the hearing that it doesn’t matter what type of screen students are using or whether it is school-sanctioned.

“All these things are going to hurt learning, which, in turn, are going to hurt our kids’ cognitive development at the time when we need our kids to be sharper than we are,” he told the committee.

While there wasn’t consensus during the hearing that federal regulations or requirements should change, some states are moving quickly to limit the use of technology in schools.

Mote, of InnovateEDU, said several bills have already been introduced across different state legislatures that aim to set stricter limits on technology use.

Among them:

• Tennessee: A bill would ban digital devices for student or teacher use and for assessments for K-5 students.
• Missouri: A bill would limit digital instruction to 45 minutes per day.
• Kansas: A bill would set strict limits on how much screen time can be used.
• Alabama: A bill would create different screen time limits for students at different grade bands.
• Utah: A bill would limit “non-essential” screen time for kids in K-3 and allow technology exposure to increase by grade level.

“We have a lot of work to do here as a sector, frankly, to make the case and to draw the distinction between consumer tech and ed tech,” Mote said.

Mote and Kloek both said companies should be following developments in the states where they work and use the guide to help them play a role in the debate.

“It would be really helpful for companies to explain how their products work and engage students in a non-marketing voice, so that parents can understand it, and policymakers can understand it, and teachers can understand it,” Kloek said.