Earlier this month, the federal education minister, Jason Clare, took to Facebook. From morning till night,” he wrote. Clare’s comments followed the Victorian government’s announcement that it will abolish the use of bring your own device (BYOD) programs in primary schools and limit screen use to 90 minutes per day for years 3 to 6 from January next year.
High schools have been instructed to enforce screen-free learning blocks for all students. The then premier Jacinta Allen launched the policy in July, saying: “Less time on devices means more time learning.” Computer use has expanded rapidly in schools in Australia and worldwide. However, the latest Naplan results (described by some commentators in the media as a “national tragedy”) have sparked a re-examination of the long-held concerns of some teachers, parents and experts about the implications of unstructured digital exposure in educational settings.
While research linking screen usage to student performance is limited, a change.org petition that calls for a rethink of device reliance in classrooms – and cites the recent Naplan results – has so far garnered more than 25,000 signatures. This unease has yielded an increasing political appetite to consider changing policy and already prompted a few Australian schools to go back to pen and paper where technology offers no explicit educational benefit. This reckoning isn’t limited to Australia.
Across the world many tech-forward school systems are wrestling with declining academic results and concerns about student wellbeing; the regional government in Madrid earlier this year announced a reduction of tech-time in primary school and Sweden is considering a reduced emphasis on technology in its 2028 curriculum. The US advocacy group Schools Beyond Screens has successfully campaigned for changes to policy in LAUSD, the country’s second-largest school district: the change will see middle schoolers have just one hour of screen time per week, per subject, and high schoolers limited to 90 minutes per course over the week. Students there will no longer take home school devices unless parents opt-in.
In the UK, advocacy group Closed Screens Open Minds, which has garnered celebrity support from the likes of Hugh Grant and Sophie Winkleman, says it’s “building a comprehensive evidence-based resource for parents, teachers, and policymakers to challenge the adoption of EdTech in schools”. The idea of reducing ambient screen time in class is increasingly popular among parents and teachers, with many complaining of the lack of ability to monitor what a child is doing on a personal laptop as well as fearing for their ability to concentrate, think deeply and learn effectively while using devices connected to the internet. Jane has been teaching in New South Wales schools for more than 30 years.
She says since bringing personal devices into every class became the norm, her students’ “capacity for human interaction is dissolving and their attention spans are shocking”. Two decades ago, the performing arts and English teacher says students could be shown a video, read a text, or consider some artwork and discuss it for the duration of the lesson. They extrapolated that for younger people, whose executive function is less developed, the effect may be even more significant.
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