KANSAS: Inge Esping, the principal of McPherson Middle School, has spent years battling digital devices for children’s attention.
Four years ago, her school in McPherson, Kansas, banned student cellphones during the school day. But digital distractions continued. Many children watched YouTube videos or played video games on their school-issued Chromebook laptops. Some used school Gmail accounts to bully fellow students.
In December, the middle school asked all 480 students to return the Chromebooks they had freely used in class and at home. Now the school keeps the laptops, which run on Google’s Chrome operating system, in classroom carts. Children take notes mostly by hand, and laptops are used sparingly, for specific activities assigned by teachers.
“We just felt we couldn’t have Chromebooks be that huge distraction,” said Esping, 43, Kansas’ 2025 middle school principal of the year. “This technology can be a tool. It is not the answer to education.”
McPherson Middle School, about an hour’s drive from Wichita, is at the forefront of a new tech backlash spreading in education: Chromebook remorse.
For years, giants including Apple, Google and Microsoft have fiercely competed to capture the classroom and train schoolchildren on their tech products in the hopes of hooking students as lifelong customers. For more than a decade, tech companies have urged schools to buy one laptop per child, arguing that the devices would democratise education and bolster learning. Now Google and Microsoft, along with newcomers such as OpenAI, are vying to spread their artificial intelligence chatbots in schools.
But after tens of billions of dollars of school spending on Chromebooks, iPads and learning apps, studies have found that digital tools have generally not improved students’ academic results or graduation rates. Some researchers and organisations such as UNESCO even warn that overreliance on technology can distract students and impede learning.
Schools in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Michigan that once bought devices for each student are now reevaluating heavy classroom technology use. And Chromebooks, the laptops most popular with U.S. schools, have emerged as a focal point. School leaders, educators and parents described the laptop curbs as an effort to refocus schooling on skills such as student collaboration and conversation.
“We’re not going back to stone tablets,” said Shiloh Vincent, the superintendent of McPherson Public Schools. “This is intentional tech use.”
The pullback is the latest sign of a growing global reckoning over how tech giants and their products have upended childhood, adolescence and education.
In a landmark verdict last week, a jury found the social media company Meta and the Google-owned YouTube liable for hooking and harming a minor. More than 30 states have limited or banned student cellphone use at school. Australia now requires social media companies to disable the accounts of children under 16, a move that other countries are considering.
Now, children’s groups and educators concerned about screen time are turning their attention to school-issued laptops and learning apps. Parents are flocking to support efforts, like Schools Beyond Screens and the Distraction-Free Schools Policy Project, to vet and limit school tech.
At least 10 states, including Kansas, Vermont and Virginia, have recently introduced bills to restrict students’ screen time, require proof of safety and efficacy for school tech tools or allow parents to opt their child out of using digital devices for learning. And Utah recently passed a law that would require schools to provide monitoring systems for parents to see which websites their children had visited – and how much time they spent – on school devices.
In a small town surrounded by wheat fields, McPherson Middle School serves sixth through eighth graders in a red brick schoolhouse built in 1938. In science class, eighth graders sit at vintage lab tables next to cabinets brimming with old microscopes. The school auditorium still has its original wooden seating.
“We already have a little bit of an old-school vibe for sure,” said Esping, now in her fourth year as principal.
She is also revisiting years-old school tech decisions.
In 2016, as part of the national trend, administrators at McPherson decided to buy a US$225 (RM907) Chromebook for every middle schooler. Google had introduced the low-cost laptops five years earlier, with a pitch that the tech would help equalise learning opportunities and equip students with vital career skills.
When Esping took over as principal in 2022, she worried that rampant tech use was hindering learning. So the school banned student cellphones.
Online bullying and disciplinary incidents quickly decreased, she said. But online distractions continued.
Some students became so hooked on playing video games on their Chromebooks that teachers had difficulty getting them to concentrate on their schoolwork, administrators and teachers said.
Students also sent mean Gmail messages or set up shared Google Docs to bully classmates with comments. Hundreds of children logged on to Zoom meetings where they made fun of their peers, teachers and students.
The school blocked Spotify and YouTube on school laptops. Then administrators stopped students from messaging one another on school Gmail.
Even then, some educators said they were spending so much time policing student Chromebook use that it was detracting from teaching. Some parents complained their children were spending hours playing video games on their school-issued devices.
Although the idea of taking back students’ Chromebooks seemed unorthodox, given U.S. schools’ deep reliance on Google’s sprawling education platform, the middle school went ahead. The changes took effect in January.
The school is part of a trend. In Wichita, Marshall Middle School is trying “tech-free” Fridays. In January, the Kansas Senate introduced a school device bill that would prohibit laptops and tablets in kindergarten through fifth grade – while restricting device use for middle schoolers to just one hour during the school day.
McPherson and schools like it say they are not just curbing Chromebooks to reduce children’s screen time. They are also aiming to refocus learning on child development, student-teacher interactions and old-fashioned fun.
“They’ve learned how to make darts again!” Esping exclaimed, pointing up at a student-made dart jutting out from a school hallway ceiling. “They are going back to the old ways of being ornery.” – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
