We’re taking the wrong approach to tech in schools

Last summer, I took a one-month sabbatical and went completely off the grid. I shut off my phone, avoided all news, and even installed a landline.

I created an analog lifestyle for my 5 and 7 year old; we traded our screens for walks in the neighborhood, picnics outside and regular trips to the library. It wasn’t always easy, but it was incredibly grounding.

I also built a stronger connection to my community.

Putting the friction back into regular life helped me recognize places where removing the friction via an app wasn’t serving me. Instead of defaulting to Amazon for convenience, I actually walked across the street to borrow things from my neighbors. It was such a joy and a reminder of how we can weaken the human experience in the name of convenience.

And I finally tackled the stack of books on my nightstand, reminding me of the focus that reading requires and the simple joy that comes from experiencing a physical book. Turning pages. Sitting with an idea. Finishing a chapter and bookmarking your place.

It reaffirmed what I already believe to be true: learning is embodied and social.

It also reconnected me to why I started CommonLit.

I wanted to build something that would help children make sense of the world around them and their place inside it. I imagined a tool that would help children become more thoughtful and curious through rich stories that offer enduring meaning.

My tech detox also had me reflecting on the front-and-center debate about the role of technology in the classroom, a tension I feel deeply.

Let’s be clear: We’ve gone overboard.

In 2020, the pandemic forced schools into remote learning almost overnight. We forget how extreme and remarkable that moment was. Schools (and companies) pulled all-nighters to make it work—and they did.

But when we finally did go back in-person, we didn’t recalibrate. We didn’t take stock.

There was no clear reset or redefinition of when and how technology should be used. Tech saturation became the default, and the market responded with urgency.

And over time, we stopped asking a critical question: is this actually helping kids learn?

As a parent myself, I have deep empathy for those fighting to get technology out of classrooms, particularly for young children. We now have causal evidence of the negative impacts of social media on adolescents. Dr. Jonathan Haidt detailed this at length in his book The Anxious Generation. Attention spans are shrinking, and we’re seeing real physical health impacts related to screen addiction that we can’t ignore. People are finally starting to take action, with school districts like Los Angeles Unified putting restrictions in place.

Meanwhile, research continues to reinforce the value of print, handwriting and human interaction, especially in early learning, when children need to see and hear language modeled in real time.

At its core, education is innately a human endeavor. It requires attention, interaction, cognitive struggle and time—the ability to navigate the messy dynamics of the physical world—things that don’t always translate into a neat database or 11” monitor. And this is especially true for children who are still building a foundation for learning. Too much cognitive offloading could mean we rob children of the very friction that makes learning possible.

But we also can’t ignore what technology has made possible in education.

Word processing, editing and composition have dramatically improved for adolescents who have mastered basic writing skills. Screen readers, translation tools and tablets have made it easier than ever to reach students who have historically been cut out of instruction—children with learning differences or those who have been displaced in refugee camps and emergencies.

The use of computers in assessments has made it possible to synthesize, score, and surface patterns across millions of students, exposing wide achievement gaps and discrepancies in state standards that help us better understand where children are being left behind. Without this kind of data, we would likely have enormous blind spots in inequities continuing to get ignored or unaddressed in policy or reforms.

And technology has made it more feasible to deliver high-quality instructional materials at scale—something we know can improve literacy outcomes when implementation is done well.

Technology can have real benefits that are aligned to our values and goals. That means knowing what the values and goals are, and having the courage to reverse course when it’s misaligned. It also means asking: How much is too much? Is it appropriate for a 5-year old to spend 6 hours on a screen at school? Where is the line?

Technology is a tool, not the end goal. And this is where we’re getting it wrong.

Too often, we treat technology like a destination rather than a vehicle.

The goal was never for a third grader to master Google Docs or the latest productivity tool.

The goal is to help students become curious and capable learners, strong communicators, and deep thinkers. Skills that will outlast any tool Apple, Google, or Microsoft builds next.

The role of technology is to support evergreen education and cognitive goals, and when it doesn’t, we have to be bold enough to take a step back, reevaluate its use and call out what isn’t worth our kids’ time or attention.

And if we use this framework—technology as a tool —to make decisions about tech in the classroom, it gets a lot easier. We can finally get intentional about our approach to technology and throw out the tools that don’t meet the standard or help us get to the real destination.

Take a few of the most debated issues in schools:

Cell phones in the classroom

If technology is a tool for learning, not a goal in and of itself, it shouldn’t compete for student attention during instruction.

Proposed opt-out legislation

If technology is a tool, not a goal, then its use should be applied in developmentally appropriate ways as children get older.

In addition to it being a massive administrative burden for the school, proposed opt-out policies sidestep the harder conversation we need to be having: what technology usage is appropriate at each stage of development throughout K-12?

We have age guidelines for almost everything: driving, voting, and even social media in some states. We can build this for screens in schools too. A kindergartener and high school student should not be operating under the same technology policy. Period.

We need clear, age appropriate, research-backed guidelines that school leaders can actually implement and parents can understand and trust.

The explosion of apps in the classroom

If technology is a tool, not a goal, then each app should demonstrate its value and earn its place in the instructional stack.

News flash: not all technology is created equal.

Today, classrooms are flooded with tools and apps that haven’t earned their keep. It’s why teachers on average are using 86 different tools in a single semester. And behind every additional app is a confused child who is trying to make sense of multiple tools that have conflicting pedagogy. Using this many tools at once adds to the instructional incoherence that is already rampant in so many schools.

It’s time we get intentional and adopt some common sense guidelines about EdTech (and I have a lot more to say about this in an upcoming piece).

Schools need to set a clear bar: Is this tool grounded in evidence? Does it offload cognitive “heavy lifting”? Is the content grade-appropriate or dumbed down? Does it have the hallmarks of a high-quality curriculum or support one directly? Does it have a skills progression that is backed in research? Does it put the child in the role of thinker and creator or reduce learning to clicking and scrolling?

And throughout the school day, when we add up all the tech usage together, what does a child’s day look like and is this what we intended? Is it instructionally coherent? And at the end of the day, are the tools in the aggregate helping us get to the destination: Are students spending enough time actually reading and writing, or does the number of apps compete for this instructional time?

If we can’t answer those questions clearly, it shouldn’t be in the classroom.

This work is instructional design. It can’t fall on teachers to figure out alone and it’s not a decision for parents to carry. Schools and instructional experts need to set the standard and make the tech earn its keep. When schools set a higher bar and procure fewer, better apps aligned to age-appropriate academic goals, the EdTech market will respond for the better – optimizing towards quality.

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My month away from screens didn’t make me anti-technology. In fact, after my sabbatical, I reintroduced technology into my life in an intentional way aligned to my values. It forced me to be clear about what real estate each app has in my life, and to what end. I’m grateful for the refresh, and a similar reboot could be a strong practice in schools too.

But here’s the bottom line: Technology is a vehicle. We should use it to scale our best educational interventions and keep a high bar when it comes to which apps we adopt for our kids.

The move isn’t to ban it. It’s to make it work for us, and ensure we’re using it to solve the right problems, like removing the enormous administrative burden from an already overstretched teacher.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

The move is to pause. Take stock. Put common sense limitations in place, differentiated by age. And adopt real standards so that every educational tool earns its keep.

Pick the best. Discard the rest.