By Whitney Wild, Dalia Faheid, Bill Kirkos, CNN

(CNN) — Dr. Yair Lev said his second-grade daughter suddenly went silent midsentence as she scrolled through a math app on her school-issued Chromebook last year. Her eyes glazed over like a “zombie.”

His daughter appeared to be overwhelmed by the stimulation from her device. She struggled through passwords, folders and apps with her “little fingers typing and typing,” he said.

“It was like a short circuit in her brain … she just lost immediately all connection with reality, with me, and me and my wife, we just stared at her in disbelief,” he said. “It was almost like a trance state.”

That startling moment was a turning point for Lev’s family: Lev and several other parents are pushing the Lower Merion School District in suburban Philadelphia to change its policy on device-led learning and allow parents to opt out of devices altogether. A school board meeting earlier this year grew so contentious parents were yelling at the district to curb its tech-led policy.

In school districts from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, parents shared how they are battling to put stricter limits on device-led learning, most commonly tablets and laptops, such as iPads, Google Chromebooks and MacBooks. Nationwide, some parents, educators and students told CNN they worry about bullying, access to adult content, the use of artificial intelligence for cheating and the little evidence that devices are better learning tools than pencils and paper.

The swing back to traditional methods follows an explosion of device-led learning ushered in by the Covid-19 pandemic, when school administrators desperately sought ways to engage students at home and ensure lower-income students had the same access as wealthy peers. Nationwide, roughly 96% of public schools reported providing students with their own take-home devices by the 2021-2022 school year, up from around 45% in 2020, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Advocates for devices in school are adamant technology-led learning ensures equitable experiences for students and helps prepare them for a technological world.

“To ban it, to act as if it doesn’t exist — that’s not protection. That’s abandonment,” said National Parents Union Founding President Keri Rodrigues.

Data on the impact of devices can send mixed messages to parents and administrators. For example, a September report from the American Psychological Association revealed devices aren’t inherently beneficial, nor are they inherently harmful.

Nearly 20 parents, educators, experts and students who spoke with CNN largely believe some technology in the classroom is helpful in specific circumstances, as parents and teachers search for the right balance.

Grassroots efforts to change district policies are starting at home

Lila Byock said her older son began bringing home D’s and F’s after starting middle school, despite understanding the material.

The Los Angeles Unified School District student’s interest in school quickly “went in the toilet” and his self-esteem declined, she said.

“He started to think he was just stupid,” she said. “There was a tremendous amount of shame.”

His teachers attributed the problem to his inability to stay focused while using an iPad throughout the day, Byock said. When she asked how often students used iPads, she said teachers told her they used them all day – even during physical education and band.

In early 2025, she brought parents and teachers together around her dining table after realizing multiple families were concerned about classroom devices. The small gathering eventually grew into Schools Beyond Screens, a grassroots movement with thousands of members and roughly 230 chapters in school districts across 40 states, Byock said.

Across the country in Pennsylvania, Lev and several other parents started a similar movement called Pencils Over Pixels to push the Lower Merion School District to change its policy toward device-led learning.

In June, the district repealed a policy parents said allowed them to opt out of device-led learning for their children. Some parents became so frustrated with the district’s position that the school board vote devolved into shouting from the audience as board members tried to speak over the crowd, video from the meeting showed. At one point, the board walked out for a brief recess due to security concerns.

“When you’re on the same side as the bullies and Big Tech, you know you’re on the wrong side,” one parent told the board. Another parent who addressed the board compared the technology policy to expired milk.

The district’s new policy categorizes technology device use by grade level, increasing independence by grade and stressing teacher direction, according to materials shared by a district spokeswoman:

• kindergarten through second grade: limited, non-routine use
• third and fourth grade: less than 30 minutes per day
• fifth and sixth grade: less than 60 minutes per day
• seventh and eighth grade: less than 90 minutes per day
• ninth through 12th grade: less than 120 minutes

Now, Lev, other parents and one student are suing the district, superintendent and board members, alleging that requiring students to use devices without allowing families to opt out violates their Fourteenth Amendment right to direct the care and education of their children, according to the August complaint. The parents argue students face excessive screen time, distracting or inappropriate material, privacy risks, inadequate supervision and AI-assisted cheating.

“Instead of paying attention in class, students consume an endless stream of short-form videos, browse social media, and shop,” the complaint said. “They chat with strangers and bully each other.”

A spokeswoman for the district told CNN it denies the allegations in the lawsuit and will respond through the judicial process.

“The Lower Merion School District is aware of a lawsuit filed by some parents, not all of whom have students enrolled in LMSD schools, alleging the School Board’s decision to repeal a School Board Policy represents a violation of their civil rights,” Amy Buckman said.

A nationwide movement away from devices

In rural western Michigan, nearly an hour south of Traverse City, Mesick Consolidated Schools Superintendent Jack Ledford dropped Chromebooks altogether in his district’s elementary school after seeing consistently low reading scores on the M-STEP, the state’s annual standardized test.

“I’m not the kind of educational leader that wants to put a plan in place for the next two years and three years,” Ledford said. “I want to do something that could move the needle quickly.”

Despite some initial grumbling from students, teachers saw a positive impact, Ledford said.

Axl Werdon, a fifth grader in the district, said he is reading more this year and has noticed other students picking up books and dictionaries during downtime in class.

“It’s just like a lame thing just to sit on your bottom, just doing something on your Chromebook,” Werdon said. “It feels way better to focus on other things.”

The movement away from devices has been led primarily by grassroots organizations like Schools Beyond Screens and educators like Ledford.

Whitney Shannon Wilson, principal of Simons Middle School in Flemingsburg, Kentucky, said her school now limits Chromebook use to a maximum of 60 minutes per week after hearing a list of challenges from teachers.

“Students were not mastering the standards that we were setting before them,” Wilson told CNN. “They were relying too heavily on their computer to do everything for them.”

Wilson said students often played games during school, and in some cases, shared secret Google Docs that resulted in bullying.

“Even though you can limit how they interact with each other, as long as teachers are watching and paying attention, they’re very sneaky,” Wilson said.

Zaylee Ovington and Kynslee Black, eighth grade students at the school, said they are relieved Simons has moved away from primarily using Chromebooks.

“(The Chromebook) would hurt my eyes. It would give me headaches because of just how much we used it,” Ovington said.

“There was not much hands-on learning,” she added.

Now, both girls say there is less conflict among their peers, and their learning has noticeably improved.

“My worst subject was math, and I feel like it was because we did all of our math on a Chromebook,” Ovington said. “This year, I feel like it’s going so smooth. I’m doing great in math.”

“For me, once you write it down and you physically do it, it’s a lot easier and it gets into your brain better,” Black said.

When asked about the potential negative impacts of Chromebooks in classrooms, a spokesperson for Google said its technology “solves real classroom challenges and helps improve learning outcomes for students.”

“We build our products in partnership with educators based on rigorous learning science, while giving schools control over school-issued Chromebooks and keeping teachers at the heart of learning,” Google told CNN in a statement.

The company also has strict policies against bullying through Google Classroom and Google for Education products, as well as offering tools for students to report instances of cruelty to administrators, according to Google.

The ‘messy middle’: Supporters say technology is critical to learning

When Sarah Dooley’s first-grade twins joined a summer production of “KPop Demon Hunters,” AI helped them rehearse, translate Korean lines and practice pronunciation. Their science fair projects – a bird feeder and a device producing the smoothest smoothies – were also crafted with AI assistance after developing their own hypotheses and plans.

They’re in the early days of this, Dooley of Austin, Texas, said, describing her children’s AI use as part of “this big experiment that we find ourselves in right now.”

But Dooley, who founded the website AI-Empowered Mom to reduce parents’ mental load through AI, distinguishes passive, isolated screen use from productive or interactive uses. Her family signed a household tech agreement: Her children are instructed to use AI with an adult, do their own thinking first and discuss its mistakes.

“While I’m a tech optimist for my life, I’m choosy and intentional about wanting to bring it into my kids’ lives,” she said.

Dooley is part of a group of parents who advocate for a selective yet intentional approach to classroom technology: While they believe screen-free families rightfully focus on children’s safety and educational outcomes, blanket bans would eliminate useful opportunities for personalized learning and disproportionately harm students who lack devices at home or benefit from alternative learning methods.

“The messy middle is probably the best place to be, rather than all in or all out with technology,” Dooley told CNN.

In Boston, Rodrigues of the National Parents Union – a nonprofit advocacy and grassroots organization – objects to schools using devices merely to occupy students. Her five sons sometimes question attending school when their class plans to watch a nonacademic film like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” she said.

Rodrigues advocates for establishing age-appropriate limits, transparency with parents, parental consent and safety controls while teaching students how to use AI and digital tools responsibly.

But Rodrigues believes technology can augment traditional teaching methods by examining how a student solves an algebra problem or structures a piece of writing and identifying learning gaps. Tech can also help students prepare for their futures: Three Virginia students built a media literacy tool using AI to teach peers to question sources and evaluate credibility, for example, she said.

Data show parents and educators alike have conflicting feelings about the right approach.

A May Gallup poll of 2,101 public schoolteachers found 61% of them believe students should spend less time on devices, while 59% of teachers believe digital tools or apps help students learn more effectively.

‘Guardrails, not handcuffs’: What experts say about protecting students

Crafting a technology policy for a wide range of students can be particularly challenging. Kids learn in myriad ways, and what works for some ages may not be appropriate for others.

“(Parents) want guardrails, not handcuffs,” Rodrigues said.

Among teachers surveyed by Gallup, 34% supported a daily time maximum for students using learning devices.

But there isn’t a consensus around using a daily time maximum. Stacy Hawthorne, a former Ohio educator and current Board Chair for the Consortium for School Networking, said her organization recommends against using minutes on screens as a benchmark.

The organization, which is a professional association for education technology leaders in K-12, advocates for a three-pronged approach: tech use should be purposeful, students should be protected online and decisions about tech need to be made locally, she said.

Furthermore, the APA report found time and engagement are poor metrics for learning. Engagement measures attention, not retention.

“What young people do on screens matters as much as, or more than, how long they spend on them,” the report states.

It’s not as simple as being anti-technology versus pro-technology, said Nicole Barnes, executive lead psychologist for the APA and lead author of the report.

“When technology is used well, it gives students focused practice, useful feedback, or access to something that they could maybe not experience otherwise,” Barnes said. “The benefit comes from whether that technology is connected to that clear learning goal and whether it’s guided by an educator who knows what that student needs next.”

The APA report recommends software that has no pop-up ads, prohibits switching and multitasking and limits information that is not directly related to the lesson.

“Stories, images, sounds, animations, and interactive features that are unrelated to the learning goal have been associated with lower recall and weaker understanding than materials that focus only on the information being taught,” the report said.

Parents and school administrators turn concern into policy

This spring, Schools Beyond Screens successfully worked with members of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, including Board Member Nick Melvoin, to remove devices for students in early education, kindergarten and first grade and significantly limit the amount of screen time students receive in school.

Melvoin authored the district’s policy, marking the first time LAUSD solidified a specific policy toward device-led learning after ramping up technology use during the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.

“When kids came back in person, they had these devices, and there are instructional benefits to certain types of technology,” Melvoin said. “But we also saw kids spending a lot of time on YouTube and spending time surfing the internet.”

The district’s curtailed screen time and other measures began taking effect this school year.

The district was conscientious of ensuring students with special needs, developmental challenges and those requiring additional tutoring requirements or English translation services continue to have appropriate access to devices in class and at home, Melvoin said.

Students can still choose to take home the devices, but it is no longer the default option, he said.

“This is a systemic problem; it’s not an individual problem,” Byock said of the overuse of devices. “The only way that I think we’re going to see real change is for parents and educators to come together and engage in collective action and attack this problem systemically.”

Elsewhere, Ledford, the Michigan superintendent, said it’s too early to quantify the impact of trading devices for books. But he said teachers have already observed calmer and more focused students.

“We’ve seen some really good things, and I think that this will translate into increased literacy scores and proficiency,” Ledford said. “It may not happen overnight, but this is something that we’re committed to.”

Once Byock’s son began replacing technology with pencil and paper, both his grades and demeanor improved, she noticed.

“He’s got a thriving social life. He is pleasant to be around,” Byock said. “For us, the change has been really miraculous.”

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