In a recent court appearance Mark Zuckerberg testified that there isn’t any research to substantiate claims that his “product” is addictive or harmful to kids. Yet, there’s a ton. And all of us in education shouldn’t just be taking note—we should be taking action.

Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation connects numerous studies proving screen time “rewires” children’s’ brain in dangerous ways. A recent 15 year study in Canada adds additional clarity: screen time is bad for kids.

Yet in every classroom I visit, screens have become a significant element of instruction.

To be clear, I’m not talking about using computers as “tools.”  Word processing, doing research, and communicating with families may indeed be appropriate uses. But, according to the research, programs that replace instruction are not.  As one recovering tech addict put it, they’re so chock full of artificial stimuli, real books can’t compete. Once indoctrinated in screen-based “learning,” students are unable to tolerate reading a paragraph in a text book or writing a sentence that doesn’t include an emoji. In short, they become non-readers.

Covid has been a convenient scapegoat for both low achievement and high anxiety, but if there’s one thing the pandemic taught us, it’s that screen-based learning didn’t work. Despite returning to regular school, test scores and suicide rates show that the nation’s children are not recovering from spending that year on screen-based programs. That’s because it wasn’t Covid that caused all the problems—it’s that we’ve doubled-down on screens, both at home and in school.

Today our school districts are spending gobs of money on snake oil tech ($30 billion in 2024). All that money spent on one-to-one devices and online programs such as Asselus and disLexia would be put to better use creating extra-curricular opportunities for kids, enhanced support staff scheduling, teacher salaries, improved prep time, or authentic reading instruction. Instead, the only real beneficiaries are the tech companies. Not school districts. Not teachers. And certainly not kids.

On top of the ginormous direct profits, Big Tech is also profiting from data mining.  Everything about you, your students, and your school is being stored on a server somewhere in the high desert of Central Oregon or the low valleys of Northern California and then sold to other companies that want a piece of your pie. Educators have long been concerned that their job security might someday hinge on student test scores, but imagine, too, a future where one of your former students applies for a job or fills out a college application or runs for political office only to have their low performance on an Aimslow or Zurn test way back in third grade sabotage their opportunity. (Yes, we purposely misspelled those to disparage the guilty!)

So what can we do? It’s time to reject screen-based learning. All of it. I know these programs can give overwhelmed teachers a bit of a break, but the studies show it’d be better to give your students time to simply draw, color, or read than to log in. Me, I’m making a commitment to stop relying on tech and I challenge you to do the same.

Because administrative initiatives almost always fail, a ban on screens needs to be organic. It needs to start with teachers rejecting tech and teachers encouraging parents to reject tech at home.  

Not convinced? Read Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, or Catherine Price’s book for teens and pre-teens, The Amazing Generation. Watch the 2024 documentary The Cost of Convenience. And share this article from Bloomberg about the Canadian study. Send these things to your board members and your open-minded admins. (In my school, we started seeing change merely by giving Haidt’s book to our principal.)

Here at ReadAloudPlays.com, we’re decommissioning our Google Forms products, the free comprehension quizzes that go with our reader’s theater. They offer a bit of convenience to teachers and they incentivize trying our play scripts, but because we believe our paper-based quizzes promote more authentic discussion, we’re moving on. We’re also making our own social media pages static.

Of course, we believe the best step any teacher can take is to utilize more “real” instruction—such as reader’s theater. In all the classrooms I visit these days, kids will almost always choose reader’s theater over screen-based activities. Visit our storefront at TpT to grab some exceptional play scripts, including our fun Chicken Little play panning social media.

Happy directing!