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The use of educational technology — from software designed for school and educational settings to school-issued tablets and Chromebooks — increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But critics, including a growing number of parents, say that instead of serving as a temporary measure, EdTech, as it’s commonly known, has increasingly become a mainstay in the classroom — and it’s harming children and the learning process.
Students are distracted by often inappropriate non-educational content they can access on school-issued devices, critics say. They also argue that EdTech harms students’ critical thinking skills.
Emily Cherkin is an educator and mother of a school-aged child. Her concerns about EdTech led her to become an advocate for reducing schools’ reliance on technology. Known as “The Screentime Consultant,” Cherkin said she’s not opposed to technology, but she draws a distinction “between EdTech and tech ed.”
“We need technology education more than ever,” Cherkin said. “Children today are actually less digitally literate than they were in previous generations, which is concerning given how many hours a day they’re actually spending on digital devices.”
Cherkin said she sees a “dire need for technology education.” But instead, “What we are doing is giving children as young as 4 and 5 years old access to the internet in the name of education, but we’re just taking reading and writing and social skill development and assessment and putting it all onto an iPad or a Chromebook.”
Cherkin’s concerns reflect those of a growing number of parents. According to NBC News, some states have limited the distribution of school-issued devices or implemented policies limiting students’ screen time.
Sweden recently advised schools to shift back to pen-and-paper coursework and printed textbooks.
A growing movement of parents is advocating for a reduction in the use of EdTech in the classroom and the learning process, including a push to allow students to opt out of such technologies or to pressure school boards and policymakers to enact policies limiting their use.
‘Sitting in front of a screen for multiple hours a day is unhealthy’
A return to traditional classroom methods represents a significant paradigm shift for schools. While many schools already used some EdTech tools before the pandemic, the period of lockdowns and school closures jump-started their use. For some school districts, federal stimulus funds provided an incentive to buy more technology.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, approximately 9 in 10 public schools now provide middle and high school students with a laptop or tablet.
Cherkin said that while EdTech was “the necessary evil” during the pandemic, school districts have been reluctant to shift away from its use, citing the money spent to purchase the technology. “It just seemed like an excuse to continue,” she said.
Tina Descovich, CEO and co-founder of Moms for Liberty, an organization that has advocated for limiting the use of EdTech, said that this has resulted in three primary harms to students and to the learning process:
- The one-to-one device model that has children spending hours of the school day on a screen instead of with a teacher or a book.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) entering classrooms with no guardrails, no transparency and no parental consent. This includes AI ”companions” on school-issued devices.
- The collection of student data by EdTech vendors. Student data belongs to students and parents, not schools or vendors.
A December 2025 NBC News report cited further harms. One mother said her 6-year-old son “repeatedly wet himself in class when he got fixated on activities with his tablet.” After consulting with her son’s pediatrician, they decided to limit his screen time, which was likely overstimulating him. The accidents stopped.
“I would argue that the physical experience of sitting in front of a screen for multiple hours a day is unhealthy,” Cherkin said. “We could talk about posture, we could talk about eye health, we could talk about [harms to] gross motor skills. We could talk about the lack of socialization. Those are all health risks.”
Students ‘sucked into communicating with strangers online’
Another parent told NBC News that her teenage son was “sucked into communicating with strangers online” through his school-issued iPad. Cherkin said such experiences are a common complaint among parents.
“I’ve heard from parents whose kids have encountered pornography on school laptops … which is horrible in and of itself. I mean, but also the number of parents who tell me that their kids are on YouTube for sometimes hours a day at school, and that they are shocked that that’s the case,” Cherkin said.
Cherkin cited the example of Typing Club — software that helps children learn to use a keyboard. She said a parent told her that her 8-year-old son was “exposed to multiple ads for gambling websites, in video form” while using the software.
Other parents and advocates say that EdTech products are contributing to a growing mental health crisis among children and teenagers.
Experts who spoke with the Daily Caller last month cited statistics and examples of kids experiencing loneliness and having difficulty forming relationships. They attributed this, in part, to a growing reliance on technology to communicate with others.
Nicole Runyon, a former child psychotherapist and parent coach, said during an online event organized by Moms for Liberty that the dopamine rush kids receive from excessive screen time leaves them “numb and disconnected.” This leads to “apathetic” behavior and “purposelessness, meaninglessness.”
Other experts who spoke with the Daily Caller cited the risks posed to kids by chatbot-based software. These include “hallucinations, ethical bias, student-data harvesting, exposure to explicit content and sycophancy” — the tendency of an AI system to agree with or mirror a user’s views to gain approval.
The use of EdTech often contradicts parents’ own tech use restrictions for their kids. “Parents have actually limited and restricted them at home for the last five years, only to have their kids show up at school and be given the same thing that they’ve been told is not safe for children to use,” Cherkin said.
Autistic kids need ‘individual attention and human connection’
Parents of children with autism have also expressed concerns about how EdTech may be negatively affecting their kids’ education and development.
Anna Moench, a mother of an autistic child, told NBC News that the exercises EdTech software develops for students, and the data the software subsequently collects, are proprietary and not disclosed either to parents or teachers.
“In order to help figure out how I can best support my child, who is autistic, I need accurate information about what’s happening at school,” Monech said.
Descovich said she has heard from parents who told her that “classroom screens make attention and self-regulation struggles worse.”
“Parents of children with special needs worry about vulnerable kids being handed devices for hours a day and interacting with AI chatbots they may not fully understand,” Descovich said. “These are the very students who most need what technology crowds out: individual attention and human connection.”
Cherkin said some technologies can “help level the playing field” for special needs children — but that they are also subject to the same potential risks as other kids.
“There are certain kids for whom certain tools might be very important. But if they are still having their data mined and they are still able to get on YouTube or access predators, that is not OK,” Cherkin said.
Cherkin cited the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is rolling back the use of i-Ready — software used for reading and math — for most students but not for special needs kids. Cherkin said she is “concerned” about schools’ “overreliance and overprescription” on EdTech for these children.
‘Parents and teachers are natural allies’ on tech use concerns
Teachers have also expressed concerns about EdTech. Some teachers argue the tools encroach on their ability to educate children or evaluate their progress.
NBC News cited teachers who said the i-Ready software, for instance, “generates new and unique questions for students based on their histories and user profiles using an algorithm.”
However, “parents and teachers are unable to see what children are asked” because that information is proprietary.
Math teacher David Stein told NBC News in February that many schools and teachers view the use of EdTech as “the default … instead of thinking about, ‘Do we need to do that on the screen?’”
Descovich said this is an issue where “parents and teachers are natural allies.”
“When decisions about instruction and grading shift from the teacher to a vendor’s algorithm, teachers become monitors of software instead of masters of their classroom,” Descovich said. “The teacher-student relationship is the heart of education, and we should defend it, not automate it.”
Cherkin said many teachers she’s spoken with “have concerns with what EdTech is doing to children, whether that’s at home or at school or both.” However, she said that when she presses teachers for details, “there is a lot of reticence and fear.”
“There is a culture of fear for a lot of educators speaking out against this,” Cherkin said, citing examples where teachers said they’d discuss their concerns but only if a pseudonym was used instead of their real name.
Cherkin said this culture of fear may be intended to overwhelm teachers and cause divisions between them and concerned parents. “If you weaken these teachers and you make them feel defeated and burned out and overwhelmed, then the solution is conveniently going to be more technology.”
EdTech business model ‘identical’ to that of Big Tech
For Cherkin, the business model of companies and software developers active in the EdTech space “is identical” to that of Big Tech.
“In order to please shareholders to increase profits — because these are all for-profit companies — you have to increase engagement,” Cherkin said, arguing that these business motives clash with children’s developmental needs.
“Digital screen time is fundamentally at odds with healthy child development. What children need will never be increased screen time,” she said.
EdTech companies also profit from the data they collect from their student users — another point of concern for many parents and advocates.
“We have yet to hear of a platform that isn’t in some way using information about the students, even to ‘refine our product,’” Cherkin said, calling this a “slippery slope” as students are not of legal age to consent to their data being used by third parties.
Cherkin noted that while there may be some reasonable need to collect data on performance metrics such as test scores, “kids are doing all kinds of stuff on these apps and platforms” that is inappropriate for third parties to track and collect.
“They might be writing about their family situation or a medical condition or a behavioral health issue or a mental health issue. These are extremely private and personal things that shouldn’t be accessible to anybody but the people absolutely necessary to see them,” Cherkin said.
In January, NBC News reported that Big Tech companies view EdTech as a means of “turning children into lifelong customers,” citing internal documents from Google.
“I do believe there is a place for technology in schools, but not via privately owned companies, not via data collection and theft and privacy risks, or via content exposure that’s deeply traumatic to children,” Cherkin said.
Groups set aside political difference to put ‘children and parental rights first’
As concerns over EdTech’s impact on children have grown, parents and activists have become increasingly active — in some cases forming unlikely alliances.
In March, the conservative-leaning Moms for Liberty partnered with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), one of the largest teachers’ unions in the U.S., and an organization which holds significantly different positions on a range of issues, such as sex education.
“We’re together on this because we’re seeing what is happening to our kids, and it really is us against [the] money,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said at an event in March. Notably, AFT has previously endorsed EdTech use in the classroom.
Descovich said that her organization’s differences with teachers’ unions “are well known” and “haven’t gone away.” But at the state and local level, teachers, union members, and parents “across the political spectrum all see the same problem: too many screens, too little learning.”
“My message is simple: Welcome to the fight. When anyone is willing to put children and parental rights first, we will stand with them every time,” Descovich said.
Concerns over EdTech have also made their way into the legal and policymaking arena. Moms for Liberty, along with other organizations, have advocated in favor of bipartisan state legislation limiting EdTech use.
In June, Florida sued OpenAI, citing “serious risks” to children.
At the federal level, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published a Surgeon General’s toolkit in May, describing screen use among children and teenagers as an “urgent public health issue.” In a statement accompanying the toolkit, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said:
“While screen use can have some benefits, the evidence of a range of risks to children’s overall mental and physical health is mounting.
“These negative outcomes are related to harmful use, including use by children with vulnerable medical conditions, along with the ubiquity of devices and features deliberately built into many tech platforms to promote ‘engagement,’ a positive sounding word that, for too many young people, is a path to addiction-like behavior.”
In March, the White House issued a “national policy framework” for AI, calling on Congress to “empower parents and guardians with robust tools to manage their children’s privacy settings, screen time, content exposure, and account controls.”
However, the U.S. Department of Education is prioritizing grant applications “to expand the appropriate and ethical use of AI” in schools. Last year, the Trump administration issued an “action plan” to “prioritize AI skill development” in schools.
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‘Don’t ask, just decline’
Many parents have taken matters into their own hands. NBC News reported in February that a growing number of parents are using legal arguments to opt out of EdTech use for their kids.
Cherkin and Descovich said this process is fraught with obstacles.
“What I’m hearing and seeing is the majority of school board leadership or school district leadership … tends to be doubling down instead of asking those tough questions or rethinking things,” Cherkin said.
“In too many districts, opting out is a maze designed to make you give up,” Descovich said. “Parents are told there’s no paper alternative or that the curriculum requires the platform, and many parents don’t even know what to opt out of because schools never disclosed what’s on the device or what data is collected.”
Moms for Liberty has developed the Safety in AI Education Initiative to advise parents about issues relating to EdTech and AI use in the classroom. Descovich advised parents to “ask questions now, before the routines set in,” and to do so in writing, and if possible, alongside other parents rather than individually.
“How many hours a day will my child be on a screen? What apps and AI tools are on the device you’re sending home? What data is collected on my child and who gets it? Can I opt out and request paper materials?” Descovich asked. “If the school can’t answer, that tells you something.”
Cherkin, who developed the Unplug EdTech Toolkit to advise parents concerned about the use of EdTech, said she used to tell parents they should try to opt their children out of using such technology, but no longer does. Instead:
“What I’m saying this year, because the momentum has changed, is, don’t ask, just decline. Just say, ‘We don’t consent to the way these products are being used with children. We don’t consent to the privacy risks. We don’t consent to the extra screen time. So, we are going to decline this product until it is effective, safe, legal and superior to the human teacher.’”
Related articles in The Defender
- Florida Sues OpenAI Citing ‘Serious Risks’ to Children — Will Lawsuits Lead to More Censorship?
- Rise in Aggression, Hallucinations Among Teens Tied to Cellphone Use
- Surveilling Kids at School Is a $3.1 Billion Industry — And It’s Making Kids ‘Anxious’ and ‘Scared’
- 10 Teens Gave Up Smartphones for a Month. Here’s What Happened
- Future of Education? WEF’s Vision — Heavy on Virtual Reality and AI Technologies, Light on Privacy Concerns
- Under Guise of ‘Helping’ Schools, Big Tech Collects — and Profits From — Kids’ Data
