Feds intensify screen time scrutiny in schools
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By
Chris Teale
The FCC will vote later this month to study whether its E-Rate program is fulfilling its goal of improving educational outcomes, rather than subsidizing kids’ misuse of devices.
Federal regulators look to be upping their scrutiny of kids’ screen time and attachment to devices.
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr announced last week that commissioners will vote later this month on a proposal to explore whether the E-Rate program, which helps pay for discounted services, internet access, equipment and maintenance for schools and libraries, is fulfilling its goals of closing the digital divide and improving educational outcomes.
Carr said the effort would look to ensure that services funded by E-Rate are being used for educational purposes, while strengthening program integrity and streamlining program administration. Habits formed during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been detrimental, he said.
“Over the last several years — and especially during COVID — many schools dramatically increased screen time for kids, with many students now swiping for hours every day,” Carr said in a statement. “Research has now been pouring in that America’s experiment with heightened screen time in schools may be related to the negative educational outcomes we are now seeing in classrooms across the country — from declining academic performance to diminished reading comprehension skills.”
Screen time has come in for increasing scrutiny from the federal government, especially when it comes to school districts’ spending on devices. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced last year it would explore whether schools have become too reliant on educational technology and said it would examine whether subsidies to those districts could be removed.
And earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory warning of the links between excessive screen time and poor educational outcomes, urging families, young people, schools and health care providers to be more cognizant of how they can have negative impacts.
Screen time has attracted bipartisan worries too, as Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers — a union that represents 1.8 million teachers, educators, staff and other professionals — recently issued an action plan urging schools to better regulate students’ use of artificial intelligence and electronic devices.
Carr said the FCC effort, which will be voted on at the commission’s June 25 meeting, will be a “smart review” of the E-Rate program to assess how effective it has been.
“For its part, the FCC has been subsidizing connectivity to and within schools for almost 30 years now — spending roughly $3 billion annually at this point,” Carr said in a statement. “[While] parents have the ability to supervise screen use and monitor internet access at home, that parental control does not extend the same way into their kids’ classrooms and libraries.”
Other federal officials said they are hopeful they can help find a better way forward and help improve educational outcomes. NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth said the agency wants to help parents get to grips with how screen time is impacting their children.
“I think it's gotten parents really asking questions, that parents can only do so much to restrict their children's technology use at home,” Roth said during an event hosted by the Free State Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C. last week. “There's been, I think, a perception that maybe we've gone a little overboard, and we need to ensure that technology use in schools is done in a thoughtful way rather than an indiscriminate way. Maybe more isn't always better, and I think the research really bears that out.”
Roth said NTIA would look to host another listening session on screen time, similar to one it held previously, which would look to have the “right voices at the table” including parents, educators and others, not just industry lobbyists.
Other groups are skeptical of the FCC’s E-Rate review, and concerned that it will be used as a way to curb the use of all technology.
"As part of this review, we should be careful not to conflate intentional, educational technology use with unsupervised personal phone use, and we should recognize that 'screen time' is not a single, narrow concept,” Joseph Wender, executive director of the nonprofit Schools, Health, Libraries and Broadband Coalition and Noelle Ellerson Ng, chief advocacy and governance officer of AASA, The School Superintendents Association, said in a joint statement.