By Susan Ferrechio (The Washington Times)
All that classroom screen time may not be a good idea after all. The Trump administration is considering a top-to-bottom overhaul of a decades-old federal program that pays for public school internet — a system some children are using to watch pornography in class.
The review has begun amid a nationwide backlash against excessive “screen time” and evidence that students have been lured by Big Tech to scroll noneducational content in the classroom.
The Federal Communications Commission announced it would examine “the surge in screen time” among students and the agency’s role in enabling it.
The FCC’s E-Rate program funds internet connectivity in public schools and libraries, amounting to about $2.5 billion annually. During the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, federal funds also covered device costs.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the effect of online devices, now in the hands of children in nearly every U.S. public school, has been staggering. Students are losing up to 38 minutes every hour to “digital distractions.”
As students’ screen time has risen, reading and math scores have plummeted, he said.
“We will take a top-to-bottom review of the program and ensure it is supporting the types of good educational outcomes that Congress had in mind when it started the program 30 years ago,” Mr. Carr said.
Public schools have begun reversing years of pushing in-classroom internet use. Some schools have adopted outright bans on cellphones. Teachers say these devices have been distracting students during class time for years.
Last year, the Los Angeles Unified School District implemented a “bell-to-bell” cellphone ban across all its schools. In April, the school board approved additional restrictions on screen time. It set weekly limits by grade and eliminated the use of digital devices, such as the popular Google Chromebooks and tablets, from early education through first grade.
The policy, which takes effect in the 2026-2027 school year, will also prohibit student access to YouTube and other video streaming platforms.
“This is really about recalibrating, resetting and reassessing our relationship with screens over the last five or six years,” said Nick Melvoin, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education. “A child sitting in front of a screen for hours isn’t getting a better education simply because the content is online.”
The FCC review will also examine federal internet safety policies for schools and will seek public comment about revisions.
Parents and educators have wised up to the lure of social media platforms in the classroom. In some cases, the phones expose students to inappropriate content.
Big Tech, meanwhile, is working to find more ways to keep students engaged on social media while in school.
Their tactics are the target of a lawsuit filed by hundreds of school districts. The case could cost Big Tech companies billions of dollars.
The Breathitt County lawsuit was selected as a bellwether from more than 1,200 similar school district lawsuits. It accused social media platforms, including Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram, and Google, which operates YouTube, of scheming to ensure students are addicted to their platforms. YouTube for Schools has launched EDU-Mode, a platform that streams educational videos.
“Internally, YouTube was not coy about its motivations for prioritizing EDU-Mode,” the lawsuit said. “YouTube imagined a world where parents ask their children, ’Why aren’t you watching more YouTube?’ And school Administrations shift budgets from textbooks to YouTube subscriptions.”
In May, Meta and three social media companies — Google, Snapchat and TikTok — agreed to a $27 million settlement with the Breathitt County School District in Kentucky. The district said the platforms caused classroom disruption and mental health damage to students. The settlement’s financial terms were first reported by Bloomberg after documents were obtained under Kentucky’s open records laws.
Evidence in the case showed Snapchat sending phone alerts to students during class time. The alerts encouraged them to post photos of what was happening at school.
Internal company documents from 2018 showed that 64% of Snapchat users ages 13 to 21 reported using the platform during school. The company created numerous avenues for advertisers to reach teenagers at school and created features that would encourage compulsive use of the platform by children, according to the lawsuit.
In a statement provided to The Washington Times, Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the company has “built YouTube responsibly — working with teachers, administrators, and parents’ groups to give students safer, more helpful experiences online.”
Mr. Castaneda said the lawsuit has been “amicably resolved” and that the company is focused on age-appropriate products and parental controls.
The platforms have responded to the criticism by highlighting enhanced security features and parental controls.
On Tuesday, Meta rolled out a suite of new safety features for children and teens that will limit their access to harmful content.
The FCC’s review of the government’s E-Rate subsidies for public school internet is backed by more startling data involving classroom screen time.
Nearly one in four teens report watching pornography during the school day, much of it on school-issued devices funded by E-Rate, commission aides told The Washington Times.
More than one-quarter of students ages 13 to 17 are using the AI chatbot ChatGPT to do their homework on school-provided laptops, the commission said.
The Education Scorecard, a joint project of Stanford University, the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard and Dartmouth College, has issued more damning evidence of the potential harm of classroom screen time.
It found that test scores, particularly in reading, have fallen since around 2013, about the time schools began ramping up classroom screen time.
“The slowdown in learning coincided with a dismantling of test-based accountability and the rise in social media use,” the report concluded.
The Times has reached out to Meta, Snapchat and TikTok for this report.
This article was made available to WMAL via The Washington Times.
