NTIA Wants to Hear from You on Excessive Screen Time at School
By Arielle Roth, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information & NTIA Administrator
As both a policymaker and a mom of six, I know firsthand how hard it is for families to manage screen time. It's challenging enough at home and with social pressures to be online—but it's even harder when so much of the school day and homework now takes place on a device. While cell phone use in schools has been the focus of much debate, classroom laptops, tablets, and digital platforms can actually be more distracting for children. And when screens become the default rather than a targeted and intentional tool, critical developmental activities inevitably get pushed aside: reading, writing, physical and creative play, hands-on learning, and the face-to-face interactions children need to thrive.
Technology has a role in education, and certain tools have opened real opportunities for students. But the pace and scale of ed tech adoption—accelerated by the pandemic—haven't been matched by serious scrutiny. Parents across the country are asking questions: How much screen and tech use in school is appropriate? What are the short- and long-term impacts on children's development, well-being, and academic outcomes? How can we ensure that tech is being used in a targeted and intentional manner, rather than in ways that are indiscriminate and harmful to development? These concerns cut across communities and politics. This is about childhood.
NTIA is launching an effort to put children first when it comes to school-based technology use. Our job is not to dictate education policy but to examine where federal policies, subsidies, and market dynamics may be pushing schools toward more screens—often without asking whether it helps children learn. And before we do anything else, we’re listening.
On December 10 from 12–1:30 p.m. ET, NTIA will host a virtual listening session open to the public. We want to hear from parents, teachers, students, and researchers. The session will center on three topics:
1. Impacts of Excessive Screen Time in Schools
We want a view of what ed tech looks like in classrooms today: the platforms, software, and devices children use from kindergarten through high school. We want to know how this affects children’s health, development, and academic skills, broken out across age groups (such as elementary school, middle school, and high school). We want to know what guidelines exist on appropriate screen time in educational settings, and what mechanisms exist for parental consent, control, and opt-out. We're also looking into how AI should—or should not—be used to support healthy tech use in schools.
2. The Ed Tech Market and How It Relates to Federal Policy and Funding
We want to hear how ed tech products make their way into classrooms. We want to understand how companies market their products to schools; what drives procurement decisions; and how schools vet products before deployment. And critically, we want to learn about which federal or private funding streams—grants, subsidies, loans—are pushing ed tech and the deployment of screens in schools.
3. Children’s Data Privacy in the Classroom
We are interested in industry practices around the collection, storage, and use of children’s data; the extent to which laws like FERPA and COPPA are being followed in school tech; what privacy and security risks children face; how effective school and platform privacy policies are; and how and to what extent kids’ data flows to third parties. Children deserve tools that enhance learning—not ones that encourage addictive habits, rely on opaque data practices, or promote technology for technology’s sake. If you share that commitment, we hope you’ll join us and add your voice.