NEW YORK — First came the cellphone crackdown. Now, parents are trying to bring back paper and pencil to the classroom.
Following a successful wave of school cellphone bans across the country, a bipartisan movement to restrict screen time for young children has emerged as the next front in the push to create distraction-free classrooms and tackle youth mental health.
The new battleground is rapidly moving from school board debates into state capitols. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are expanding their focus beyond smartphones in high schools to the ubiquitous presence of tablets and digital learning tools in elementary schools.
Six states — including Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia and Utah — enacted screen time laws this year, and at least 10 others introduced legislation. The Los Angeles Unified School District, which educates nearly half a million children, became the first major school district to mandate limits after the school board voted Tuesday to restrict screen time before second grade.
The changes are unfolding as organized parent networks urge schools to roll back the presence of digital technology — a multibillion-dollar industry — while some proponents argue that restrictions would hinder student learning. It’s also a fraught time for the nation’s tech giants, which are facing opposition from the public and elected officials on everything from data centers to artificial intelligence to social media.
Now federal lawmakers are starting to jump into the anti-screen time movement, with bipartisan legislation introduced in May that would require the U.S. surgeon general to establish age-based screen time recommendations for children.
“These technologies are emerging very quickly, and the threats to child development are increasing every day as the technology advances," said Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.), who is cosponsoring the bill with Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.).
"This has been an alarm bell for parents," said Houchin, who cited poor sleep, decreased school performance, less physical activity and lackluster social skills among young people as becoming big motivators among screen skeptics.
Even if Congress struggles to legislate on major policy issues in an election year, the bipartisan appeal of addressing kids' online safety and AI rules suggests the issue will persist regardless of which party controls Congress.
Limiting screen time is “smart policy, and I think there is very real anger amongst families and parents, Democratic, Republican … about what Big Tech has been doing,” Deluzio said.
The anti-screen time movement coincides with a nationwide reckoning against tech companies, with political candidates increasingly tapping into populist pushback. That sentiment was on display in California, where industry-backed candidates recently fell short despite massive sums of cash going into their campaigns. The battle moved to a House primary in New York where a leading candidate campaigned as an outspoken tech critic. The candidate, Assemblymember Alex Bores, ultimately lost Tuesday night, but the victor, fellow Assemblymember Micah Lasher, also supports regulating AI.
On the anti-device front, the office of the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory warning last month that excessive screen use among kids and teenagers can be "harmful," calling it a public health concern. A week later, the head of the nation’s second-largest teachers union called for a ban on screens — including online tests — for students in prekindergarten through second grade, and an end to “student-facing” AI in elementary schools.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten attributed the new momentum to the success of cellphone bans — teachers reporting higher student engagement — and parents concerned about their kids’ attention spans.
“If you're having a screen in school, as opposed to a process of teaching and learning, it's going to long term be a very bad thing, and that's why we came to banning screens,” Weingarten said.
Still, she said she supports exceptions for compelling circumstances, such as students with disabilities required to use screens as part of their services.
Her proposals are part of a 10-point plan that does not suggest an AI ban but rather balancing the benefits of technology “while mitigating the harms.”
But trade associations in the education tech industry think the anti-screen time movement is oversimplifying the issue, conflating social media and other consumer tech with schoolroom products.
“We are hopeful that as this conversation continues, the discussion allows for more nuance and is not just focused on the root force general idea of technology use writ large,” said Sara Kloek, vice president of education and youth policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, which represents companies that partner with schools to build tools like digital curricula.
Movement to curb screen use emerges
Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, a movement to ensure that every student had access to a device to close the “digital divide” had already kicked off. But the effort ramped up during the pandemic, as school districts nationwide were forced to transition to remote learning — turning education technology into a lucrative business.
Schools have since become dependent on digital devices for instruction, raising red flags for parents. They and pediatricians, who have long held deep anxieties over excessive screen time, have found validation in the research of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and cognitive neuroscientist Jared Horvath, who connect today’s devices to rising youth anxiety and declining test scores.
Horvath’s work argues that declines in standardized test scores are linked to the phenomenon of schools giving every student a laptop or tablet — findings cited by Weingarten and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in pushing for screen limits.
“A sad fact our generation has to face is this: Our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age,” Horvath told lawmakers at a U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing in January.
For years, this trend left parents quietly worrying at home, said Jodi Carreon, national director for Schools Beyond Screens, a national coalition of parents and educators pushing for limits on classroom tech.
“What’s changed is that parents are seeing real progress, like the [Los Angeles district] resolution that just recently passed, and so I think it’s given us permission to speak up finally,” Carreon said. “It’s becoming the defining education issue of our time.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District, California’s largest, approved a resolution last month that calls for keeping children off screens until the second grade, tracking and limiting screen time for older students and prioritizing “paper-and-pen” assignments. That marked a dramatic shift for the district, as it previously spent years promoting classroom use.
In March, Alabama became the first state to sign screen time limits into law, which go into effect in January 2027. The measure mandates limits for children up to age five in licensed child care facilities as well as state-funded pre-kindergarten and public kindergarten classrooms, and established a task force to develop standards for how screens are used.
Alabama state Rep. Jeana Ross, a Republican who previously served as the state’s early childhood education secretary — and sponsor of Alabama’s screen time law — said she’s now looking to expand it to older students. In the meantime, training for teachers on how to manage children’s screen time and parental awareness will be a key part of the effort, she said.
New York is the latest state to signal interest in working toward that goal. Its Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, said she wants to consult teachers and other education experts first.
New York State United Teachers, the state’s largest teachers union, passed a resolution at the end of May calling for limits on screen time and artificial intelligence.
“We are not anti-technology,” said NYSUT President Melinda Person, who said she plans to consult parents, pediatricians and neuroscientists before pushing for legislation in the 2027 session. “We wanna make sure that we do it right, and we’re not gonna rush and say, ‘This is the solution we know right now.’”
New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels pledged a more stringent approach to AI use for the youngest children, amid criticisms of the city’s draft regulations. He also said he’s “thinking about screen time,” but stopped short of proposing limits.
A majority of the City Council called for slowing down the rollout of AI in schools. Education officials told lawmakers Wednesday that the school system won’t release updated guidance this month as originally planned, citing feedback and the conversation around screen time limits.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has not addressed whether he’d pause the rollout of AI but has expressed openness to the idea of limiting screen time.
Democratic Missouri state Rep. Kathy Steinhoff — who successfully advocated for a more district-by-district approach in her state — also said she supports limiting screen time for young children, but called for a thoughtful rollout.
“We got into this mess because we embraced educational technology in this way,” Steinhoff said. “Now we’re saying, ‘Oh there’s a dark side to it that we didn’t know about.’ Well we don’t want to go completely the other way. We don’t want to get rid of all of the things that we were hoping to accomplish with technology.”
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