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Opinion | Screens Are Everywhere in Schools. Do They Actually Help Kids Learn?

Opinion | Screens Are Everywhere in Schools. Do They Actually Help Kids Learn?

A few weeks ago, a parent who lives in Texas asked me how much my kids were using screens to do schoolwork in their classrooms. She wasn’t talking about personal devices. (Smartwatches and smartphones are banned in my children’s schools during the school day, which I’m very happy about; I find any argument for allowing these devices in the classroom to be risible.) No, this parent was talking about screens that are school sanctioned, like iPads and Chromebooks issued to children individually for educational activities.

I’m embarrassed to say that I couldn’t answer her question because I had never asked or even thought about asking. Partly because the Covid-19 era made screens imperative in an instant — as one ed-tech executive told my colleague Natasha Singer in 2021, the pandemic “sped the adoption of technology in education by easily five to 10 years.” In the early Covid years, when my

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Mothers need support managing kids’ technology use

Mothers need support managing kids’ technology use

Between March 2020 and June 2022, families in Toronto experienced some of the longest lockdowns in the world. Ontario schools closed for in-person learning for over 27 weekslonger than any other province or territoryand government restrictions on public spaces last for months. Parents were left to figure out how to manage work, child care and virtual school.

We interviewed mothers of young children to reflect on how they managed their children’s screen media practices during this cumulative time.

Our study is part of a larger collaborative research study, with researchers in Australia, the United States, China, Colombia, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

Children’s experiences of media consumption and production can vary entirely depending on their context, for example, due to government regulations or socio-economic differences.

Our interviews suggest there is never-ending pressure on mothers to negotiate kids’ technology use. Mothers need support managing these

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